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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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GLIMPSES 



OF GREAT FIELDS 



REV. J. A. HALL, A. M. 

M 



" This I dare affirm in knowledge of nature, that a little natural philosophy, and 

the first entrance into ii, doth dispose the opinion to atheism ; but on the other 
side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men's 
minds to religion." — Bacon. 




BOSTON 

D LOTHROP COMPANY 

FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 



^\ ^S 8 ^ 






Copyright, 1888 

BY 

D. LoTHROP Company. 



PREFACE. 

" Canst thou by searching find out God ? " " If a 
man die, shall he live again ? ^' These were the questions 
that already concerned the Chaldean seer, and that ever 
since have been uppermost in the minds of thinking 
men. They are the questions that every philosophy 
and every religion has attempted in some way to 
answer. The answer that on the part of Christian 
thinkers has from time to time been given to the first 
of these questions has been determined by the under- 
standing that has been had of its meaning. Those 
who have understood Job to be speaking of a compre- 
hensive knowledge of God, have answered his question 
in the negative. In this sense it is felt that God can- 
not be found out by searching. But those who have 
understood Job as speaking not of a knowledge com- 
prehensive but apprehensive, have usually answered 
his question in the affirmative. It is now conceded that 
God may be apprehended, that is, that his existence 
as the result of searching may be affirmed. This was 
the opinion of the great Schelling. He expressed it as 
his belief, ^' that a thoroughly rational perception of 
the existence of a personal being as the author and 



PREFACE, 

ruler of the world, would be the ultimate fruit of a 
thorough and comprehensive speculation.'' In the 
opinion of the author of this book this prophecy of 
Schelling's has already been fulfilled. In his humble 
judgment the time has already come when the Chris- 
tian idea of God may be said to have been intellectually 
apprehended by the thinking mind not only in the 
Church, but also in the philosophical world. A few of 
the reasons upon which he bases his judgment are 
given in the following chapters. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

FORCE 9 

MIND 57 

LIFE 107 

THE BRAIN 149 

THE SPIRITUAL BODY 191 



FORCE. 

" I deem it just as absurd and illogical, to affirm that there is 
no place for a God in nature, originating and controlling its forces 
by his will, as it would be to assert that there is no place in man's 
body for his conscious mind." — Dr. W. B. Carpenter. 

" The convertibility of the physical forces, the correlation of 
these with the vital, and the intimacy of that nexus between mental 
and bodily activity, which, explain it as we may, cannot be denied, 
all lead upward towards one and the same conclusion, the source 
of all power in mind; and that philosophical conclusion is the 
apex of a pyramid, which has it foundation in the primitive in- 
stincts of humanity." — Dr. W. B. Carpenter, "Mental Physi- 
ology," chap. XX ; p. 696. 



GLIMPSES OF GREAT FIELDS 



FORCE. 

For He spake and it was done, He commanded 
and it stood fast. — Psalm xxxiii. 9. 

In the early history of Science, the attention 
of men was mainly directed to matter. Whence 
comes matter ? What are its laws ? What is 
matter in itself ? These are the questions with 
which men of science were long concerned. 

The past century, however, has been character- 
ized by the intensity of its efforts to solve two 
other problems, namely, What is force .'^ What are 
its laws ? 

In the thorough study of matter it was found 
that little could be known as to its nature. It 
was found that some of its laws could be deter- 
mined, but that matter itself could not be defined. 
But while the study of matter, so far as enabling 

9 



10 FORCE, 

the investigator to affirm what it was, was con- 
cerned, proved unavailing, it was not without its 
profit ; for the inquiry of the present times in 
regard to force, has but sprung out of the inquiry 
of the past in regard to matter. The study of 
matter revealed the truth that nothing could be 
known of it except through its manifestations of 
forces ; and thus out of the fruitlessness of inves- 
tigation in one direction, has come the more fruit- 
ful research in another. 

But now, when we consider the universal preva- 
lence of force in our world, as well as the functions 
which it performs, it seems strange that its suc- 
cessful investigation, as well as the formulating of 
its laws, should have been deferred until now; and 
yet the progress which has of late been made in 
this most interesting department of our knowl- 
edge, may at least in some measure atone for the 
years of former ignorance. 

The task which we have assigned for ourselves 
in the present lecture, is, to make ourselves ac- 
quainted as far as possible with this invisible 
something which we call ^^ force." The first thing 
in our study of nature with which we are 
impressed is, the universal prevalence of force. 



FORCE. 1 1 

Here we find it manifesting its presence in 
heat, there in light. Here in electricity, there 
in chemical affinity. Here in magnetism, and 
there again in motion ; for we must not for- 
get that these various terms, heat, magnetism, 
light, and so forth, which we use when speak- 
ing of these various phenomena, are, after all, 
but different names for the one thing called force, 
and are simply meant to describe the different 
modes of its manifestation. Indeed here in the 
present universe force is more universally present 
even than matter. Unrest everywhere implies the 
presence of force, and there is nothing at abso- 
lute rest. The rocks that sleep on the mountain- 
side are not at rest. So far as appearance goes 
they may not have changed position ; they may 
seem to have rested in the same position which 
they now occupy since the morning of creation, 
and yet throughout their structure there has not 
been a moment when there has ceased to be move- 
ment. 

Heated under the sun, or cooled by the passing 
cloud, every change in temperature has produced a 
molecular change throughout their whole structure. 
Slow chemical or electrical actions, even light, or 



12 FORCE. 

some invisible radiant forces are ever at work, in 
some way affecting them ; so that at no moment can 
they be said to be at absolute rest. In the ocean 
stretching itself in the sunlight and unruffled by 
the faintest breeze, mighty forces are at work. In 
the ether, here in the atom, or there in the far- 
away nebular spaces, forming a world, force is at 
work, in one or another of its numerous forms ; 
but when we consider force in its relation to our- 
selves, in every function of life, it assumes a new 
interest. 

It is not until we ask ourselves what we might 
do and be if force were not, that our real depen- 
dence on it^ as well as the integral part that it 
really plays, begin to appear. 

Take, for instance, the force locked up in the 
sunbeam. Never was an unweaned child more 
dependent on its mother than are we on the sun. 
We need heat, we need water, we need food and 
clothing. For our highest happiness, commerce 
and the various industries must be. But the power 
that makes all these possible is to be traced to the 
sunbeam. 

Coming down through the ether it strikes some- 
where the earth ; let us say that it falls on an ex- 



FORCE, 13 

panded sheet of water, on a pond, a lake, or the 
ocean. Here its force, in the form of heat, changes 
the particles of water nearest the surface into 
steam; and then, lifting these steam atoms aloft 
into the atmosphere, bears them away in the lap 
of the storm, perhaps beyond the tropics or the 
Arctic Circle. By and by these particles, having 
been condensed, fall in rain. Rushing down the 
hillsides in torrents they fill the channels of the 
river that carries our commerce to the sea. Here, 
driven by the force of the sun, transformed now 
into wind, this commerce is carried abroad to 
other nations of the earth, and the ships again 
return, laden with the products of other shores. 

And thus you see, when we begin to trace the 
force of a single sunbeam, how wide our field is, 
and how numerous the modes are that force may 
assume. Nor is this all. No sooner has our river 
reached the sea, bearing on its bosom, the products 
of the soil, than it is again pumped up by the 
force of the sun, falls again in rain, and the force 
expended in lifting is now transformed into the 
kinetic force of the river, which as it moves on 
again to the sea turns the mills and the facto- 
ries that grind the meal for our bread, and spin the 



14 FORCE. 

fabric for our garments. All this does the force 
of the sunbeam do for us, as falling quietly, and, 
as we perhaps thought, without effect, on the 
water. But suppose now that our ray, instead of 
falling on the pond, or lake, falls on the land ; its 
effects would not be less marked. Here it would 
produce vegetation and set in operation all those 
hidden springs of life, which, manifested in forms 
of beauty or of use, make it possible for us to live. 
And so, were we to trace the matter still further, 
it would be easy to show that there is not a func- 
tion in your life or mine, not a portion of the 
organic world around us, not an atom or a world 
in the universe, with which force has not some- 
thing to do, and in the building up and condition- 
ing of which it is not a profninent factor. 

But we have now gone far enough to ask the 
question. What is force } What is this invisible, 
intangible something which now here, now there, 
is constantly solving for us the problems of exist- 
ence 1 What can we know about it } 

It is characteristic of the thinking mind that it 
cannot be satisfied by a study of phenomena sim- 
ply. For a time it may interest itself in mere 
appearance, in the observance of variety in pbe- 



FORCE. ' 15 

nomena ; but by and by it ceases to be satisfied 
with this, and seeks to know what that may be 
that lies back of appearance, the something that 
is the cause and condition of appearance. Thus 
it was that for a time men were satisfied to regard 
force simply on the side of its manifestation or 
appearance. They scrutinized a body as it fell to 
the earth, and studied out the laws of its descent. 
They watched the flight of projectiles; measured 
their momentum. They watched the planets as 
they sped on in their nightly orbits, watched care- 
fully their behavior, and formulated the laws 
governing the heavenly worlds. To-day, however, 
men are pushing their investigations further ; they 
are getting more nearly than hitherto into the holy 
of holies of nature, and are studiously endeavoring 
to know force in its essence. They ask. What is 
this unseen, imponderable, immaterial something, 
this ever-present factor called force ? No question 
has been of greater interest, nor is it strange 
that it should be more easily asked than answered. 
As long as force was regarded merely as motion, 
or resistance, it was easy to define it. Then it 
was sufficient to say that force was the power that 
produced motion or resistance. But unfortunately 



1 6 FORCE. 

for that definition, it has been found that motion 
is only one out of many modes of force ; that heat, 
light, electricity, attraction, chemical affinity and 
the like, are also forces just as truly as is motion. 
It was found, also, that force had that which re- 
lated it more nearly to the realm of mind than to 
that of matter, and that in order to explain many 
of its operations, an intelligence somewhere had 
to be supposed. And thus, as men attained a 
truer conception of force, it was found that the 
definition that made it simply the power to pro- 
duce, or to retard motion, was too narrow, and 
that that definition did not define force at all, but 
only motion, which is but one of the modes of 
force. Nor does the more recent definition, that 
makes force a push, pull, or weight, as the case 
may be, seem to be more satisfactory. For while 
these may be the measures of forces operating in 
certain ways, it is clear that neither of these defi- 
nitions define force; for force is manifestly that 
which lies back of the push, back of the pull ; the 
thing that causes the weight or pressure. Between 
force, and the effects or manifestations of force, 
there must be a wide distinction. '' They differ, 
in fact, in precisely the same way as length or 



FORCE, 17 

breadth differs from superficial area. And this 
modern abuse of the word is no more outrageous 
aHke to science and common sense than would be 
the attempt to assign the height of a mountain in 
acres."* Indeed, it has come to be admitted as 
strongly probable that there is no such thing as 
force as it is ordinarily conceived, any more than 
there is such a thing as sound or light ; and yet 
we must retain the term as designating certain 
phenomena which are constantly appearing, just 
as we must retain the terms ^^ sound" and ^4ight," 
though it is clear that they have no existence as 
things. 

But now when we have come to regard force no 
longer as a thing, that is, in the sense in which 
matter or substance is a thing, we have gone a 
great way in coming to a true conception of what 
force is in itself ; and if we have accomplished no 
more by this advanced step, we have at least rele- 
gated force from the realm of the seen to that of 
the unseen, and have come by that much nearer 
to determining its origin. 

And here we may venture on a definition of 
force, which must stand or fall, according as to 

* Unseen Universe, p. 104. 



1 8 FORCE. 

whether it describes and explains the thing defined. 
A true definition must always be a description 
which manifests as far as possible the nature of 
the thing defined ; it must add to our knowledge 
of the thing itself. Of every scientific definition 
we may demand that it give us some insight, not 
alone into the method, but that it also set before 
the mind the idea according to which we may 
interpret not one, but all the phenomena of a 
class. 

Conforming, then, to these requirements, what 
now is force '^. Our answer is : Force is voluntary 
energy, directly or indirectly applied. As now 
existing in the universe, it is voluntary energy 
indirectly operative. But as to its origin, in time 
all forces must be traced to voluntary energy, 
emanating from a personal will. 

Let us now give ourselves to the task of deter- 
mining how far our definition will go in explaining 
the facts, and whether, in its application to the 
laws of force as already worked out, it will stand. 

The scientific history of the last century was 
marked by the discovery of two great principles, 
known as the ** correlation " and ** conservation " 
of forces. In the little town of Woburn, Mass., 



FORCE. 19 

in the year 1753, was born Benjamin Thomp- 
son, afterwards known as " Count Rumford." 
One day, in the discharge of his duties in the 
Munich arsenal, he observed the large amount 
of heat o-enerated in the borins; of a brass cannon. 
At once he proposed to himself the question, 
''Whence comes this heat produced in this me- 
chanical operation ? " In order to solve the prob- 
lem he entered on a long series of experiments. 
Repeating the operation of the Munich arsenal, 
he constructed a steel borer, and with this he 
operated on a brass cylinder. Fixing the borer 
into its position and forcing it down tightly against 
the cylinder, which was made to revolve by horse 
power, he soon observed the change in tempera- 
ture which had before attracted his attention. 
The variation of temperature was registered by a 
thermometer. With this contrivance he found 
that in the space of thirty minutes the tempera- 
ture of the cylinder was raised from sixty degrees 
to one hundred and thirtv deo-rees Fahrenheit. But 

J o 

now, what brought about this change in the tem- 
perature of the metal under the friction of the 
brass with the steel auger } It was clear that 
there was a relation between the friction and the 



20 FORCE. 

amount of heat, but what was that relation, and 
how was it to be explained ? It did not take Mr. 
Thompson long to perceive that the heat came 
out of, or rather was but a transformation of, the 
energy expended by the horse. In producing the 
revolution of the cylinder, force was expended by 
the horse. When the force expended was greater, 
as was the case when the friction was increased 
by bringing the metals into closer contact, it was 
found that the heat generated was greater, and 
vice versa. Guided in the proper direction by 
these experiments, Rumford was soon led to see 
that in the case before him force was changed 
into heat ; that the energy expended by the horse 
was not lost, as had been supposed, but that it 
had all been conserved, and was now stored up 
in the form of heat in the brass cylinder. By 
further experiments it was easily shown that 
this heat could be again changed back into dy- 
namic or motive force ; and though Rumford did 
not know the mighty bearing of his discovery, yet 
to him belongs the honor of first establishing a 
principle which has since, in a large measure, rev- 
olutionized the world of scientific thought. From 
that day to ours the advance has been prodigious. 



FORCE. 21 

The principle discovered by Rumford, and 
worked out to its present perfection by such men 
as Joule, Grove, Mayer, Faraday, Helmholtz and 
Liebig has now become an established dogma of 
science known as the principle of *^the correla- 
tion and conservation of forces." 

At this point it is important that we should 
understand precisely what is meant by the phrase 
''correlation and conservation," as well as observe 
in how far these principles may lay claim to the 
dignity of scientific laws. By the term "conserva- 
tion " is meant, in simple language, this : the inde- 
structability of any force. We mean by it that no 
force is annihilated ; that when it is, as we say, 
expended, it has not ceased to be ; not gone out of 
existence, but remains as a factor in the universe, 
though it may exist in altogether another form. 

As no atom of matter can be destroyed, so 
neither can any particle of force. Now, it was 
long before this fact was recognized ; it was 
supposed that when a force was expended, as we 
call it, that it ceased from thenceforth to be, and 
that if its place was ever again to be filled, it must 
be by the creation of some new force. 

When, for instance, a projectile shot from a 



22 FORCE. 

cannon fell to the earth under the law of gravity, 
or encountered resistance that destroyed its mo- 
tion, it was supposed that the force which it rep- 
resented was forever lost. That when the arrow 
had reached its goal the force that had propelled 
it in its flight was annihilated. It took a long 
time to understand that if this were true, some 
hidden laboratory in which force is manufactured 
must be kept constantly in operation to supply 
the place of that which is being constantly ex- 
pended. But by and by, however, it came to be 
asked what becomes of these forces when they 
are, as we say, expended } And may it not indeed 
be that they are in some way conserved — stored 
up, perhaps, in some other form } Might it not 
be that the heat produced by the contact of the 
cannon ball with the resisting medium, and the 
heat of the anvil under the repeated strokes of 
the blacksmith's hammer be but expended force, 
though now in another form } Might it not be 
that the disturbance of the ether particles, as the 
projectile shot through them, is but carried to 
other entities, and from them again to still others, 
so that no force is really lost } 

Well, these questions are now satisfactorily 



FORCE. 23 

settled. No doctrine of science is more clearly 
established than that force, once in existence, is 
never annihilated. But when this was established, 
the other principle, namely, that of correlation, was 
also fixed. It was found that no body could be 
heated without some other body being correspond- 
ingly cooled ; that one mode of force could not be 
produced without exhausting another in an equiva- 
lent ratio. To this principle was applied the term 
correlation, and by it was meant, that when a 
force existed in one mode, it ceased to exist in the 
mode immediately preceding, and that the second 
mode was generated at the expense of the first, 
the third at the expense of the second, and so on. 
But, after all, the terms correlation and conser- 
vation express facts that are much the same ; for 
experience proves that if forces are conserved 
they must also be correlated, and if correlated 
they must also be conserved. Perhaps it would 
be better to say that the one expression states or 
refers to the fact, and the other to the method. 
And now let us go out into nature, and see 
whether we can prove our principles of correla- 
tion and conservation to be true. 

In speaking of force in relation to its power 



2 4 FORCE. 

to do work, it has become necessary to use two 
terms : kinetic and potential. A ball, for instance, 
projected from a piece of ordnance is capable, as 
we say, of performing execution. By that we mean 
that its energy is operative energy, or the energy 
of motion ; and its power to accomplish work is 
measured as half the product of the moving mass 
into the square of the velocity. Force as thus 
measured is called kinetic energy. But there is 
another kind of energy which has also power to 
do work if allowed to. This is called, by way of 
distinction, potential energy. It is the energy 
that the rock possesses when it rests in an ele- 
vated position ; for, to demonstrate the presence 
of force in this case, you have only to remove 
whatever obstruction there my be — let it fall to 
the earth — and its latent force is at once given 
out. But' now observe not alone how energy is 
conserved, but also how one kind of energy is 
capable of being transformed into another, or, as 
it is called, conserved. 

Take the illustration given by Stuart and Tait. 
A cannon ball is fired upward into the air. Against 
the force of gravity, such a ball, as it mounts, will 
each moment lose a portion of its velocity, until 



FORCE, 25 

it finally comes to a standstill ; after which it will 
begin to descend. When it is just turning it is 
perfectly harmless. '^And if we were stationed 
on the top of the cliff to which it had just reached, 
we might, without danger, catch it in our arms 
and lodge it on the cliff. Its energy has appar- 
ently disappeared. Let us, however, see whether 
this is really true or not. 

'' It was fired up at us, let us say, by a foe at 
the bottom of the cliff, and the thought occurs to 
us to drop it down upon him again, which we do 
with success, for he is smashed to pieces by the 
ball. In truth, dynamics informs us that such a 
ball will strike the ground with a velocity, and 
therefore wath an energy, precisely equal to that 
with which it was originally projected upward. 
So likewise a pond of water, unless it has a fall, is 
of no use in driving a water-wheel. The head or 
the power of descending, gives it a store of dor- 
mant energy, which becomes active as the water 
descends." 

Now observe here the operation of our princi- 
ples of correlation and conservation. It would at 
first thought have been supposed that when the 
cannon ball had reached the top of the cliff, its 



26 FORCE. 

energy was lost, annihilated ; but not so. The 
energy expended in projecting it upward is stored 
up, or rather changed into potential energy ; and 
all that you need to do to call it out again, is sim- 
ply to drop it, and by the time it reaches the earth 
its force is the same practically that it was the 
moment it left the mouth of the cannon. So with 
the water of the pond on the hillside. It would 
appear that the force expended by the sun in lift- 
ing its water to this elevated position when it was 
taken up in the form of vapor, was lost. But 
liberate the water ; let it rush down the hillside ; 
and as it erodes the soil and sweeps all before it, 
you see that the power expended by the sun in 
lifting it was not lost, but only stored up in the 
form of potential force. And thus in these two 
cases you see the law of conservation. But ob- 
serve also the operation of our other law, namely, 
that of correlation. As the cannon ball was 
mounting upward, its kinetic force was being 
gradually transformed into potential, until at the 
moment the uppermost limit was reached, its 
kinetic was entirely transformed into, and existed 
alone as potential force. But the moment the 
ball began to descend, its potential was again 



FORCE. 27 

changed back into kinetic ; and thus do we find 
our principle of correlation also operative. But 
notice still further the operation of our principles ; 
when the ball reaches the earth with the velocity 
acquired in the descent, what, then, becomes of 
its energy ? Has it not now been lost ? Let us 
see : the moment the ball strikes the earth, as 
the result of impact, heat is produced. 

Just as when the blacksmith strikes his hammer 
on the anvil, and the temperature of the metal is 
raised as the result of impact, so when our ball 
reaches the earth its temperature, as well as that 
of the earth on which it falls, is suddenly raised ; 
that is, heat is produced. Now we learned when 
speaking of the experiment of Rumford, that heat 
was proven to be a mode of force ; that it was the 
dynamic force of the horse transformed into heat 
force in the cylinder. So when the descending 
ball impinges on the earth, its kinetic force is 
immediately transformed into heat force, and can 
be changed back again from heat force into that 
of dynamic. It is true that in the case before us 
all of the dynamic force of the ball is not trans- 
formed into heat, but it is not on that account 
lost. The falling ball has influenced the earth — 



28 FORCE. 

moved it out of its course in a certain ratio, and 
in this way has the force been perpetuated. 

But to come back to the heat produced at the 
moment of contact of the ball with the earth. 
Let us see how that, though its energy in a large 
measure was transformed into heat, the force of 
the descending ball was still conserved. It is uni- 
versally known that heat expands metals. If you 
take an iron bar, measure its length at a certain 
temperature, say of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, 
and then measure it again after it has been heated 
to a temperature say of three hundred degrees 
Fahrenheit, it will be found to have expanded. 
The force of this expansion is practically unlimited. 
If the bar is free to extend itself, its force will of 
course not be observed ; but if by some mechani- 
cal appliance you should endeavor to resist the 
force of expansion, you would get some idea of its 
power. And so, if we could by some means 
measure the force of expansion caused by the 
heat produced by the cannon-ball at the moment 
of impact with the earth, we should find that the 
dynamic force of expansion in the metal ball, plus 
that of the earth, would be practically equal to 
the force of the descending ball. 



FORCE, 29 

Now, see what we have here : First, we have 
the kinetic force of the ball as it mounts upward ; 
we then have this force changed into an equivalent 
of potential force when the ball has reached its 
highest limit ; we then have this potential force 
changed back again into kinetic force, which at 
the moment of impact with the earth, is equal to 
the force with which it was originally discharged. 
At the moment of impact we have kinetic force 
changed into its equivalent of heat force, and 
lastly this heat force changed into the force of 
expansion, or, what is the same, potential force. 
And thus we might go on tracing some particular 
force through its various modes back and forth, 
hither and thither, until however skeptical we 
might have been at the start, we should at last 
come to a firm faith in the integrity of the prin- 
ciples of correlation and conservation. 

Now, by the process just pursued in our ex- 
amination of motion and of heat, we may also be 
convinced that electricity too is but one out of 
many modes of force ; a force brought out of some 
previously existing mode, and capable of being 
resolved into any other force, such as heat, motion, 
light, etc. To one who has kept pace with the 



30 FORCE. 

progress of inventions, and taken the care to study 
into their methods of appUcation, this will be 
apparent. For illuminating purposes, electricity 
has now come into practical use. But whence 
comes the light that emanates in such dazzling 
brilliancy from the carbon point, or the arc, as 
the case may be 'i We say it is produced by the 
electric current ; but what produces the current } 

Follow one of those wires to its starting-point 
and you will be let into the secret. There is a 
steam engine ; as its wheels revolve, they com- 
municate motion to two bobbins, which, revolving 
at a high rate of speed in close proximity to the 
poles of a powerful magnet, produce a current of 
electricity which with proper mechanical appli- 
ances gives us the electric light. Now, in this 
operation you have four modes of force ; heat, 
motion, electricity and light. The force of heat 
in the fuel is first transformed into that of motion ; 
that of motion into that of electricity, and this 
again into that of light. In each step the correla- 
tion appears, and each successive force is but a 
transformation of the one that preceded it. Each 
force exhausts its predecessor, and takes up into its 
own form of energy the energy of its predecessor. 



FORCE. 31 

Now it may indeed be true that in the succes- 
sive steps the conservation of force may not be 
clearly demonstrated. That is, the force of elec- 
tricity may not be the exact equivalent of the 
dynamic force expended by the engine, or the 
force of motion may not be the exact equivalent 
of the expended heat force ; in other words, we 
cannot say, strictly speaking, that one force is 
definitely and equivalently convertible into another. 
But it must not be forgotten that the initial force 
has not been lost even in the slightest degree, 
though it may have been dissipated into other 
forces of which no account has been taken. Thus, 
part of the heat force may have gone out into 
the air, part of it into the machinery ; part of the 
dynamic force of the steam may have been taken 
up in overcoming friction in the machinery, and 
so, while the exact equivalent of the original force 
may never practically be reached in the transfer- 
ence of one mode into that of another, yet if the 
dissipated energy invariably incident to the con- 
verting of forces could be measured, it would be 
found that no particle of force has been lost or 
annihilated, though but part of it may have been 
converted into the new mode. 



32 FORCE, 

But we will not dwell longer in illustrating our 
principles of correlation and conservation ; we take 
it for granted that they already are sufficiently un- 
derstood. By the same process it might easily be 
shown that our principles apply to the physical 
forces of plants and animals, as well as to those 
forces of the inorganic world which we have just 
considered. But our aim has, perhaps, already 
been attained, which was to show that, strictly 
speaking, the forces present in the universe are 
not of various kinds; on the contrary what are 
commonly regarded as different forces are to be 
reckoned as but different modes of the one some- 
thing. Just as the player in the theatre may 
personate different characters, assume different 
costumes, and yet remain the same person, so 
may this something we call force assume different 
roles, passing from one mode to another without 
being lost or annihilated. And thus the store of 
force with which the universe was at its beginning 
endowed, remains constantly the same, undimin- 
ished by the slightest amount, and will go on in 
its changes and evolutions, restoring at the last 
the precise number and value of the talents origi- 
nally intrusted. 



FORCE. ZZ 

But we come now to the more important phase of 
our subject, and to inquire, Whence comes force? 
What is its origin ? We can trace it as under its 
changing forms it seemingly endeavors to elude 
pursuit ; we can prove its identity as here it ap- 
pears in heat, there in motion, or here again in 
electricity, but can we not go further, and come to 
know something as to the nature, or perhaps even 
as to the origin of force ? Let us make the at- 
tempt. If our principles of conservation and cor- 
relation hold, we must not look for the origin of 
force in time ; that is, in the present order of things. 
For if forces were constantly being produced in 
nature, and if, as we have seen, no force once in ex- 
istence is annihilated, we should have the anomaly 
of constantly increasing force, which would in- 
validate our principle of correlation ; for this 
principle requires that every new mode of force 
shall come from the exhaustion of some force 
previously existing. For instance, when motion 
is produced from heat, heat-force is simply trans- 
formed into that of motion. Prof. Helmholtz, in 
his demonstration of the impossibility of per- 
petual motion, has clearly proven this to be true, 
and, at the same time, shown that one mode of 



34 FORCE. 

force exists but at the expense of another. If 
this were not true, and if new forces could be 
created or developed without the exhaustion of 
others, then would perpetual motion be possible. 
But, if our principle of correlation holds (and not 
a single fact can be produced to invalidate it), 
then must we look in vain for any new force as 
being developed out of the material world. 

The modern statement of the principle of cor- 
relation is, according to the author of the " Unseen 
Universe," briefly this : '' In any system of bodies 
whatever, to which no energy is communicated by 
external bodies, and which parts with no energy 
to external bodies, the sum of the various potential 
and kinetic energies remains forever unaltered." 

In other words, while one form of energy 
becomes changed into another, each change rep- 
resents at once a creation of one kind of energy, 
and a simultaneous and equal annihilation of an- 
other, the total energy present remaining forever 
unaltered. It is then at least certain that matter 
cannot create force, and that from no laboratory 
in which the mere natural is brought into relation, 
can force come as a product. Outside, then, of 
the material world, must we look for the origin of 



FORCE. 35 

force. Nor can it be said that force itself is 
matter in any of its forms. The fallacy of such 
a notion was long since exposed by the illustrious 
Mayer, in his work on Force. Force may act 
on matter : it may likewise change the form of 
the material ; may hold its parts together by co- 
hesion, chemical affinity, or gravity ; may operate 
with it as the moulder operates with the clay ; 
may lift ponderous masses from the earth, and 
toss them with the ease that a boy tosses his ball 
into the air ; but force ever remains apart and 
distinct from that upon which it operates. 

But here, as the result of what we have just 
been considering, the question may come, Does 
force exist apart from matter } Can it be said to 
have an existence apart from the material, so that 
if matter were to be destroyed, force would not be 
destroyed } So intimately are matter and force 
united, that it has come to be believed by many 
that an essential relation exists between the two ; 
a relation so intimate that one could not continue 
to be without the other. By some matter has been 
defined as the seat or vehicle of energy ; implying 
that without matter force could have no existence. 
Now, if it be denied that anything exists save 



36 FORCE, 

that which may be apprehended by the sense, 
and as it is apprehended by the sense, then force 
may not exist apart from matter. But against 
such a limitation of our knowledge the common 
consciousness of humanity protests. The fact 
that two things, so far as the testimony of the 
sense goes, always are found associated, is no 
proof that they are essentially one, or that they 
cannot exist apart. To insist on such a doc- 
trine would not only be to break down the most 
inspiring hopes of mankind, but to stultify the 
universal consciousness of humanity. 

That no one, guided simply by the testimony of 
the sense, could say that the soul and the body 
are not essentially one, is apparent. We have no 
sense faculty that can get between and differen- 
tiate the two. We have never seen them sepa- 
rated, and we have no empyrical proof that they 
can be. But not simply as a revolt from the grim 
consequences of admitting their essential unity 
and dependence, but, as the necessary outcome of 
all true thinking, we have come to regard them as 
essentially separate ; one as material, the other as 
immaterial, though in the present order of things 
always found together. And so it comes to be at 



FORCE. 37 

least thinkable, that force may exist apart from 
matter, though so far as experience goes they are 
always associated. The oversight on the part of 
those who maintain that force may not exist apart 
from matter is this : that apart from matter it 
cannot be apprehended by the sense ; it is alone 
as force operates on matter that it can appeal to 
the sense, for by the sense we can know the mate- 
rial alone. But we are not left thus to reason 
out the possibility of the separate existence of 
force. We know that at certain moments its ex- 
istence must be separate. From the first we have 
spoken of the force of the sun as operating on 
the earth. Now what had we there .'^ On the one 
hand an immense mass of matter called the sun ; 
on the other, our globe made up of matter also. 
But these immense masses of matter are separated 
from each other about ninety-five million of miles. 
Associated with the material of the sun are pro- 
digious forces. How did these happen to affect our 
world } For unquestionably these same forces, 
originally existing and operating in the sun, are 
now present in the earth in the form of life, heat, 
etc. But why are they here 1 There was a 
time when they existed in association with the 



38 FORCE. 

matter of the sun ; they are now associated with 
the matter of the earth. Therefore there must 
have been a stage in which the force, having left 
the sun, had not yet reached the earth ; a period, 
the duration of which we cannot estimate, but 
which must certainly have been of considerable 
duration, when the force was to be associated with 
neither the sun nor the earth, but en route. Dur- 
ing that period, however long or short, energy 
must have existed disassociated from matter, and 
had an existence as simple force. 

The same is true whenever force passes from 
one body to another ; during the time of its pas- 
sage it cannot be conceived as associated with 
matter as we know matter, but exists as free, pure 
force. And so, while apart from matter we may 
not be able to demonstrate its presence in any 
particular place any more than the beam of light 
may be seen apart from the dust particles afloat in 
the air of the room, yet it is plain that it must 
exist in some form during the period of transition 
or it could not reveal itself again in the one after it 
had left the other. We are aware that to this it may 
be replied, that the ether itself is matter, and hence 
force en route is never for a moment really disas- 



FORCE, 39 

sociated from matter, but co-exists with the matter 
particles of the ether. Now we have no disposi- 
tion to discuss this point at length. It is clear at 
a glance that if the ether is matter, then it is 
matter from which everything which we have come 
to regard as characteristic of the material, has been 
eliminated. A material through which a body like 
the earth, surrounded by an atmosphere, at a 
velocity of a hundred thousand feet per second, 
can pass without resistance, and without even 
loosing its atmospheric envelop, is simply incon- 
ceivable. And yet no fact in physical astronomy 
is more clearly established than that the earth 
does this, and that the resistance of the ether to 
the earth, in spite of its immense velocity, is in 
reality nothing. Moreover, however attenuated 
the matter of the ether might be, it cannot be con- 
ceived how even a gaseous body like that of a 
comet, shooting through the spaces at a rate sur- 
passing a thousand times that of a cannon ball, 
could pass without being dissipated or even re- 
tarded in the slightest degree. For if matter, how- 
ever minutely divided, must offer resistance, even 
though that resistance may decrease as the subdi- 
vision goes on, and matter becomes more and 



40 FORCE. 

more attenuated, there cannot come a point when 
resistance will be zero. If matter be present at all, 
the zero point will be arrived at the moment that 
all matter as we know it is eliminated, and not a 
moment before. But when the zero point is once 
reached, and resistance is nothing, then is matter 
as we know it necessarily absent. 

But we may go further than that. It has come 
to be an axiom of Science that energy becomes 
more and more marked as the grosser material is 
eliminated. You may start, for instance, with 
some form of matter, come up from one grade of 
the material to another still more subtle, and at 
each step, instead of energy growing less as you 
recede from the grosser to the more subtle, it 
becomes, on the contrary, greater and more active. 
Thus if a point could be reached at which mat- 
ter would be completely eliminated, that point 
would be the point of pure energy. And thus it 
becomes no longer a question whether force can 
exist apart from matter, as we know matter ; in- 
deed it would be more to the point to ask whether 
matter can exist apart from force, than to ask 
whether force can exist apart from matter. If 
force passes from world to world, as it certainly 



FORCE. 41 

does across immeasurable spaces, then, during the 
period of its passage, its existence is an existence 
apart from the material. And if it be true, as 
Science teaches, that energy in the universe be- 
comes greater as we get further and further from 
the mere material, and approach nearer and nearer 
the immaterial, then it becomes well-nigh certain 
that when the realm of the immaterial is once 
reached, force instead of ceasing to be, would but 
become pure in its character and perfectly active in 
its operations. It may therefore be affirmed that 
while matter and force in the present order of 
things are intimately associated, they are by no 
means inseparable ; may even in the present uni- 
verse exist apart, and that the origin of force is 
not to be found in the material. Back of matter, 
prior in time to the history of the present material 
universe are we driven in our search for the 
origin of force. We must find it, if we find it at 
all, in the immaterial, the unseen. 

But as matter cannot generate energy, so neither 
can life. The idea that life can generate energy 
has long been abandoned. Life is energy. To 
say, therefore, that energy is produced by life 
would be simply to affirm that force is produced 



42 FORCE. 

by force, and thus to reason in a circle. But now 
observe to what we have come. In our search for 
the origin of this something called force, we trav- 
erse the fields of the material and the living in 
vain. Ask where are the secret springs of forces 
that are ever playing in the universe, and the 
answer that comes from matter is, they are not in 
me. Life too answers they are not in me. Even 
tim^ answers they are not in me. 

And now we may venture to ask, May not that 
profound investigator, W. R. Grove, who with keen 
insight and unsurpassed skill, pushed his investiga- 
tions to the uttermost scientific limits, may he not 
have been right, when he said, ^* causation is the 
will, creation the act of God " .^ May Carpenter 
not have been right when he said, " The convert- 
ibility of the physical forces, the correlation of 
these with the vital, and the intimacy of that nexus 
between mental and bodily activity, which, explain 
it as we may, cannot be denied, all lead upward 
towards one and the same conclusion, the source of 
all power in mind ; and that philosophical conclu- 
sion is the apex of a pyramid which has its foun- 
dation in the primitive instincts of humanity " } 

But having looked in vain for the origin of force 



FORCE. 43 

in the material, having looked in vain for it in the 
realm of the living, there yet remains another field 
open to our search. Before we come to it, how- 
ever, let us note one thing : the better we come to 
know force, the more does it assume the nature of 
something guided by intelligence; in other words, 
the more we know of it the more do we suspect 
its voluntary origin. It is gradually coming to be 
settled that force as it works unhindered in the 
universe is not blind, but that it ever works to a 
rational end. It is because this fact has been per- 
sistently overlooked, that many of its operations 
have gone unexplained. Hitherto it has been de- 
manded in scientific discussion that no fact shall 
be explained by the introduction of a factor out- 
side the merely natural. On this principle many 
have worked in their interpretation of the facts of 
force, but with the most unsatisfactory results. 
Theory after theory has been advanced, but no 
single one as yet has been adequate to the task of 
explaining all the facts. That force refuses to be 
thus interpreted is attested by the fact that, after 
a century of theorizing, we have even now no 
theory that can explain either the forces of life or 
gravity ; the very forces which of all have been 



44 FORCE. 

most carefully studied. Until Science is willing 
to lift her eyes above the merely natural, she must 
fail in every attempt to account for the most com- 
mon facts of force. 

But a new day has already begun to dawn. It 
has come to be understood that no hypothesis 
built alone on the material can account in any 
manner for the operations of vital forces ; and 
equally frank is becoming the admission that the 
most plausible theory of gravitation hitherto ad- 
vanced from the materialistic side, namely, that of 
Le Sage, will neither account for the facts, nor is 
yet consistent with common sense. The tendency 
now in science is to the recognition of an intelli- 
gent principle back of and as directing force in 
its operations. 

In his Outlines of Astronomy, Sir John Her- 
schel does not hesitate to say, ^^ It is reasonable to 
regard the force of gravitation as the direct or 
indirect result of a consciousness or will exerted 
somewhere." 

In a recent lecture delivered in New York, by 
Professor C. A. Young, the astronomer of Prince- 
ton College, you find these words : '^ How it is 
that one atom of matter can attract another atom. 



FORCE, 4S 

no matter how great the distance, no matter what 
intervening substances there may be ; how it will 
act upon it, or at least behave as if it acted on it, 
I do not know, I cannot tell. Whether they are 
pushed together by means of an intervening ether, 
or what is their action, I cannot understand. It 
stands with me along with the fact that when I 
will that my arm shall rise, it rises. It is inscruta- 
ble ; all the explanations that have been given of 
it seem to me merely to darken counsel with words 
and no meaning. They do not remove the diffi- 
culty at all. If I were to say what I really believe, 
it would be that the motion of the spheres of the 
material universe stand in some such relation to 
Him in whom all things exist, the ever-present 
and omnipotent God, that the motion of my body 
does to my will." 

That is a remarkable statement, and all the more 
so as coming from one prominent in the ranks 
of those who have hitherto protested against the 
introduction of a higher factor in explanation 
of existing facts. But not less noticeable are 
the words of Lionel S. Beale in regard to the 
forces of life. Watching the cell through the tube 
of his microscope, with an experience and skill 



46 FORCE. 

unsurpassed by any investigator in his depart- 
ment, and impelled also to account in some way 
for the facts observed, these are his words : *^ Over 
and over again, cells have been compared with 
laboratories ; but the chemist in these cell labo- 
ratories has been ignored; and with machines, the 
constructor of which, as well as the engineer and 
manager, has been entirely left out of consider- 
ation.'* ^^ Authority may continue to refuse to ad- 
mit, or may deem it expedient to deny that the 
living state differs absolutely and entirely from 
the non-living condition, but the truth remains 
that in the living state of matter, whether it be 
the living matter of a growing fungus, or that con- 
cerned in mental action, material forces and prop- 
erties are somehow governed and controlled, and 
in a manner not to be imitated by us, or to be ex- 
plained by anything known concerning non-living- 
matter, while it is incontestable that the moment 
the matter ceases to live, its capacity for mani- 
festing its ordinary properties returns ; in fact, in 
all life we must admit the operation of a power or 
influence far removed from the physical category. 
This psychical factor has never been explained 
away, and is the life of every living thing." 



FORCE. 47 

And thus it is coming to be admitted that, in 
order to explain the two modes of force, namely, 
that of gravity and that of life, a higher factor 
than the merely physical must be introduced, as 
well as that force is somehow affected and con- 
trolled by, if it is not indeed the outcome of, 
intelligence. 

And now the results of these admissions are at 
once apparent. If these two modes of force, the 
one in the realm of the material, the other in the 
realm of the vital, are to be accounted for alone 
on the assumption of an underlying intelligent 
principle, then may all modes be accounted for in 
the same manner. For introduce into the universe 
these two modes of energy as initial, admit them 
to have come out of intelligence, and then, accord- 
ing to the principle of correlation, every mode 
may have been evolved from them. Let gravity 
be the initial force in the realm of the non-living, 
and out of it, as we have learned, w^ill come motion, 
heat, electricity, light, and the entire category of 
physical forces. Let life in its simplest form be 
once introduced, and out of it can come every 
vital force operating in the organic world. Fix 
your attention on that. If gravity and life have 



48 FORCE. 

their origin not in the material, but the intelligent ; 
if these two forces in the statement of Herschel 
are to be traced as the result directly or indirectly 
of ^Svill exerted somewhere*' — if that can be 
made out ; if there is a force in the universe with 
which gravity and life stand correlated, and which 
is itself correlated but on the one side, and if that 
force is intelligent, then may every mode of force 
be traced, in respect of its origin, directly to the 
immaterial, the spiritual, the intelligent. 

It is therefore more than a presumption that in 
the last analysis all force must be resolved into 
voluntary energy, and the strength of our propo- 
sition, that *^ force is voluntary energy directly or 
indirectly applied," is made to appear. But we 
have one point yet to examine. 

We have just seen that force in its operations, 
when thoroughly studied, compels the admission 
of intelligence back of it ; and that the motions 
of the planetary bodies, as well as those of the 
cell, have their nearest parallel in the motions of 
the human body under the control of will. From 
this there is but a step to our proposition. Before 
we take it, however, one thing must concern us ; 
we must ask, — 



FORCE, 49 

Does voluntary energy meet the requirements 
demanded by the idea of an original force ? It 
may be that voluntary energy itself stands in cor- 
relation with some previously existing force ; per- 
haps when brought under inspection it is not of 
itself original. In our search we cannot stop short 
of the ultimate. 

Now the idea of an original force demands that 
such strength shall be underived ; that is, that its 
energy shall somehow be self-developed ; impart- 
ing, but not receiving, or, in other words, corre- 
lated but on the one side. Any force claiming to 
be original must fully satisfy these requirements. 
And so it is necessary to ask. Have we such a 
force in will } Is not its energy to be traced to 
some other mode } If these facts can be estab- 
lished, then is it original, ultimate. 

In coming to the solution of this question one 
thing must not be overlooked, and that is, that 
will, as we here know it, is by no means what it 
must be in its normal existence. It is a question 
whether it is absolutely unconditioned even by its 
material environments, and yet we cannot, even 
with its present surroundings, speak of it but as 
free, and as virtually unconditioned. What will 



so FORCE, 

must be, in the person of Him who is the abso- 
lutely unconditioned, we do not know, we cannot 
tell. It is different at least from ours, and yet, 
environed as the human will is, its energy is the 
only original energy known to us. Of it alone 
can it be said. It speaks, and it is done ; it com- 
mands, and it stands fast. Take, if you please, 
some piece of mechanism to which motion has 
been imparted by human power — let it for ex- 
ample be a clock. You may trace the motion of 
one part to another, and this to still another, 
throughout the entire series, from the pendulum 
to the mainspring; and as you do so, you have 
an illustration, on a small scale, of the principles 
of correlation and conservation. Begin with the 
force farthest removed from the central one — the 
mainspring. Start with the motion of the pendu- 
lum, as, swinging back and forth, it measures the 
flying seconds. 

Here you have a force ; but you can, according 
to the principle of transmutation of energy, trace 
the force expressed in the motion of the pendulum 
to the force of the escapement wheel ; this to the 
next wheel in the systerri, and so on till you come 
to the spring, the original force in the mechanism. 



FORCE. 51 

But when you come to the spring you have not 
yet reached the Hmit. The force exerted by the 
spring is but the equivalent of a certain amount 
of muscular energy expended in the winding. 
Your muscular energy may be traced again to 
nervous force ; this nervous force again to the 
displacement or motion of certain particles of 
the brain, and, finally, the motion of these brain 
particles may be traced to the will. But ob- 
serve that you have now reached the ultimate. 
Back of the will you cannot go. You cannot take 
another step in the regressus ; the will is the 
ultimate. 

And so it is seen that among the known forces 
in the universe, voluntary energy alone can lay 
claim to being original. Every other known force 
may be traced to some other force preceding, but 
back of energy in volition we cannot go. 

And now what are the conclusions to which we 
are inevitably led } If analogy counts for any- 
thing, then may it not be said that in will as we 
know it, operating as it does, not alone in con- 
trolling, but also in imparting motion to the body, 
and through the body — putting into the world 
new and original forces — may we not say that 



52 FORCE, 

in this we have a fact in the light of which the 
universe may be interpreted ? And may it not 
with certainty be affirmed that every force, from 
those that control the atom, on up to those which 
drive the planets in their fiery orbits with resist- 
less might, are but the emanations of a supreme 
will exerted in the beginning ? Aside from energy 
in volition, there is no original force known to us. 
It alone satisfies the idea, in that it comes from 
no pre-existing mode. It alone imparts, but re- 
ceives not, the only factor that can put a power 
into the endless cycle of forces that shall go on 
into the eternities, yet itself remaining outside 
the cycle, its energy underived, unconditioned, 
ultimate. 

And now go out into the universe with this con- 
ception of force as coming out of intelligence ; 
sit with Herschel, and Newton, and Kepler, and 
Tycho Brahe ; watch the mustering squadrons of 
suns and moons and stars as, in fiery armor, obedi- 
ent to the laws of nature, they march on in grand 
review. Sit with Heinrich Frey and Lionel Beale 
before the cell as it builds the wondrous fabric of 
nerve and fiber and muscle, in conformity to plan, 
and nature will no longer be inexplicable. Back 



t'ORCE. S3 

of force in planetary and cell movement there will 
be found will. Back of will, a Person ; He who 
was, and is, and is to come. 

" He whose presence bright 
All space doth occupy, all motion guide 
Unchanged through times all-devastating flight, 

Mighty One. 
Whom none can comprehend, and none explore, 
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone 
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er, 
Being whom we call God, and know no more." 



MIND. 

" The doctrine of the materialists v/as always, even in my youth, 
a cold, heavy, dull and insupportable doctrine to me, and necessa- 
rily tending to Atheism. When I had heard with disgust, in the 
dissecting rooms, the plan of the physiologist, of the gradual 
accretion of matter and its becoming endowed with irritability, 
ripening into sensibility, and acquiring such organs as were neces- 
sary, by its own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual 
existence, a walk into the green fields or woods, by the banks of 
the river, brought back my feelings from nature to God." — Sir 
Humphry Davy. "Consolations in Travel," p. 206. 

" We are led by a scientific logic to an unseen, and by scien- 
tific analogy to the spirituality of this unseen. In fine, our con- 
clusion is, that the visible universe has been developed by an 
intelligence resident in the unseen." — " Unseen Universe," p. 22.^. 



MIND. 

About the time that Jesus was born m Bethle- 
hem of Judea, there flourished an illustrious poet 
and philosopher, Titus Carus Lucretius. He came 
upon times when corruption had penetrated every 
fiber and vein of the national life, when extrava- 
gance and lust rioted in the heart of society, and 
when the whole system of national and social life 
was cancerous to the very core. Amid the out- 
rages of that awful epoch life had lost its power 
to charm, and suicide, glorified by the stoics, was 
recommended as the surest refuge against the vice 
and despairing misery of the times. But while 
life had become a burden, and death was to be 
chosen as a relief from life's misery, **the dread 
of something after death '' made men cling to an 
existence that was scarcely to be endured. 

It was but natural that out of such times there 
should come a characteristic philosophy, or rather, 
that the thinking out of which the disordered state 
sprang, should take form in a philosophic system. 

57 



5 8 " MIND. 

To the keen mind of Lucretius, it was obvious that 
the dread of the unseen, into which men haunted 
by a guilty conscience feared to go, was brought 
about by the belief in the gods, "the avenging 
deities '' that took account of the sinful deeds of 
the present life, and who, in a future one, would 
certainly institute a reckoning. But since this 
fear was what kept men chained to an existence 
from which they longed to be free, it became im- 
portant that it be dissolved, and that the belief 
in the gods, out of which it evidently came, be 
demonstrated as groundless. 

It was to this task that Lucretius came. He 
aimed to show the emptiness of all belief in an 
over-intelligence as concerned in the affairs of 
the world and men, and ascribed all things to 
natural causes. With him the universe found its 
explanation in the ^^ primitive atom." In the rock, 
the unyielding iron, and the denser bodies, the 
material atoms out of which, according to his sys- 
tem, the universe was built, stood in close contact. 
In the air, the ether, in the sunlight and gases, 
these atoms were less closely related ; and thus 
in the universe without, the atom and its relations 
were made to account for all, and mind, spirit, the 



MIND. 59 

gods, could not be. But while with his atoms 
which he made the cause and explanation of all 
things, Lucretius dissolved the gods, leaving noth- 
ing in the outer universe but matter, there still 
remained a fact for which he had to account — it 
was the fact of mind within. Of a mind without 
men could not be so certain. True, they thought 
they saw its evidences in the world about them ; 
they thought they heard, in seasons of reflection, 
the mind without speaking to the mind within, but 
of this they had no absolute proof : it might and 
it might not be. But of mind within they were 
certain ; men knew that they thought. They felt 
that thought was not, and could not be, matter, 
and so, while the material atom might be made to 
account for all that was without, it could not so 
well account for that which went on within — it 
could not account for mind out of which thought 
sprang. They saw, too, that if all was not matter 
within, then all might not be matter without ; and 
that if mind lived in man it might live out of 
man ; might be back of nature, and thus, after 
all, be in the universe. And so Lucretius had to 
readjust his system ; had to go further perhaps 
than he had at first calculated. In short, he had to 



6o Mind. 

explain mind as he had explained matter. And 
so he said that, like matter, mind was made up of 
atoms free to move among each other, and that 
the rapidity of mental operations was to be ex- 
plained from the fact that the atoms concerned in 
thought were round and perfectly smooth, as well 
as small in size. And thus with Lucretius matter 
was deified that mind might be eliminated. With 
him the material was all. Those entities that we 
call mind and soul are born and perish with us ; 
nothing is but '^ body and void/' 

As might have been predicted, the philosophy 
of Lucretius, created as it was for the avowed pur- 
pose of breaking down intelligence, thoughtful as 
it was in some of its features, came to naught in 
the very age in which he lived. A universe with- 
out intelligence could not satisfy the reason even 
in its simplest processes, and men saw that a sys- 
tem from which mind was ignored, or in which it 
was made to be but a phenomenon of matter, could 
lay no claim to being a true philosophy. 

Lucretius, in regard to his theory, might have 
learned wisdom from his contemporary : '' Far more 
easily will we be able to build a city in the air, than 
on earth to found a city without the gods.'^ 



MIND. 6 1 

And yet, strange as it may seem, in almost every 
age since Lucretius, men have worked upon the 
very problem over which he labored in vain ; have 
tried to demonstrate the solution of the universe 
in terms of matter, and, ignoring mind, have en- 
deavored to account for being. It was to this that 
Locke, Hume, and afterwards the Mills, by meth- 
ods peculiar to each, brought the wealth of their 
geniuses. Taken up in our own times by men like 
Spencer, Bain and others, with arguments drawn 
purely from the physiological field, the popular 
philosophy of to-day has come to be decidedly 
materialistic in its character. And so, while many 
have given themselves no concern as to the method 
by which these conclusions have been reached, or 
even asked whether they have been legitimately 
or illegitimately drawn from the facts, or indeed 
whether by such methods the facts themselves are 
to be at all explained, yet accept without further 
question the conclusions arrived at, and make such 
the basis of their mental and moral life. 

It is our purpose in the present chapter, so far 
as our space will allow, to enter into an adverse 
criticism of this current philosophy that practi- 
cally denies to mind a place as real being, and, 



62 MIND. 

instead of asking whether matter and force cannot 
be made to account for all phenomena, to enter 
into an inquiry as to whether by these alone phe- 
nomena can be explained at all, and whether the 
true order is not first mind, and then matter ; first 
mind as conditioning and determining, then matter 
as conditioned and determined. It will be appar- 
ent at a glance, that this problem is most inti- 
mately connected with the one that we attempted 
to solve in the previous chapter. Our aim there 
was to show that force was not to be traced to 
a material origin, but rather to a mental. 

But what if, in the language of the current 
philosophy, mind itself is but matter 1 What if 
thought be but the product of the fibers and cells 
of the brain — a mere secretion, and nothing more ? 
If this be true, if mind be nothing more than mat- 
ter in some one of its forms, then must our posi- 
tion in regard to the beginning of force be aban- 
doned, and all search for its origin becomes futile. 
Nor is this all ; ignore mind as separate being by 
merging it into matter, and you have destroyed 
the possibility of all knowledge. Man is nothing, 
then, but an indefinite quantity upon which impres 
sions may be made, but which to him have no more 



MIND. 63 

meaning than the image has to the mirror upon 
which it falls. It becomes, therefore, a question of 
vital importance whether this gospel of matter, so 
characteristic of our times, has its foundation in 
fact, and whether matter is in reality all. We shall 
therefore enter into our present inquiry not alone 
in the interest of the view expressed in relation to 
force, but in the interest at once of morality, 
religion, philosophy, and, indeed, of every vital 
question with which we as men are to be con- 
cerned. 

Our first task must be to ascertain the precise 
position at present held by the more advanced 
materialists. Their fundamental principle is, that 
nothing exists at all but matter. 

That which we call mind is nothing but a func- 
tion of the body ; a necessary product of sensuous 
perception and the nutritive matter absorbed by 
us, but pre-eminently a product of the action of 
the cerebral portions of the brain. Mind is a pro- 
duct of the brain-development, just as the secre- 
tions are the product of the glands. Thought, in 
the language of Moleschott, consists in the motion 
of matter; it is a translocation of the cerebral 
substance ; without phosphorus, there can be no 



64 MIND. 

thought, and consciousness itself is nothing but an 
attribute of matter. Man, says Czolbe, is nothing 
more than a mosaic figure, made up of different 
atoms and mechanically combined in an elaborate 
shape. As heat and light are but modes of mo- 
tion, so also is nervous activity. And if nervous 
activity is but matter in motion, so also is vital 
energy ; and if vital energy is but matter, so also 
are mental judgments, so also is mind itself. It 
comes, therefore, to this: that all mental operations 
are but manifestations or expressions of material 
changes in the brain ; that man is but a thinking 
machine, his mental life entirely determined for 
him by conditions over which he has no control. 
That this is what we are to understand as the posi- 
tion of materialists, is expressed in no uncertain 
terms in the correspondence between H. G. Atkin- 
son and Harriet Martineau, in which are to be 
found sentences like the following: '* Instinct, 
passion, thought, are effects of organic substances." 
**A11 causes are material causes; in material condi- 
tions I find the origin of all religions, all philoso- 
phies, all opinions, all virtues, all spiritual conditions 
and influences, in the same manner that I find the 
origin of all diseases and of all insanities in mate- 



MIND, 65 

rial conditions and causes. I am what I am — a 
creature of circumstances ; I claim neither merit 
nor demerit." *' I feel that I am as completely the 
result of m.y nature and impelled to do what I do, 
as the needle to point to the pole or the puppet 
to move according as the string is pulled." 

From these utterances it must be apparent that 
mental actions can be nothing more than the 
activity of matter ; that mind itself is but matter 
conditioned and determined by its environment. 
To speak, therefore, of mind, is to speak of that 
which is not ; matter is all. 

Now before we go on we must stop to see out 
of what this materialistic conception of man has 
come. For in making up our estimate of any sys- 
tem we will always be aided by an inquiry into its 
history. If, from any reason, whether of prejudice 
or other cause, a full view of the field to be trav- 
ersed has not been had, we may at once suspect 
that in the system there will appear some essential 
defect, which must nullify it as a true interpreta- 
tion of that which it attempts to explain. In 
looking, therefore, into the history of this concep- 
tion, we shall find its error to consist in a one- 
sided study of man ; a study of hmi purely from 
the physiological side, 



66 MIND. 

Its advocates are men eminent in the various 
departments of physical science. Men who have 
looked profoundly into nature, studied out her 
laws and methods, but who, according to their 
own acknowledgments, have given themselves no 
concern in regard to psychology. The dogma of 
evolution has taught them to regard man but as a 
higher order of the brute, and as such he must be 
experimented on, dissected, studied by the same 
methods. The microscope, the scalpel and the 
electrode are applied. Nerves are traced to their 
supposed centres, back again to the muscles ; the 
electrode is applied ; certain parts of the brain are 
touched, and certain motions follow. Hence it is 
assumed that nervous activity, like electricity, is 
but a mode of motion ; stands, therefore, in correla- 
tion with other forces, and other modes of force 
may be changed into it. The conclusion thus has 
been arrived at, that if nervous activity is but a 
mode of motion, similar in every particular to any 
other mode, and governed by precisely the same 
laws, then, too, is vital energy ; and if vital energy 
is but material, why, then, are not all mental phe- 
nomena — why not mind } 

And thus for half a century men have been giv- 



MIND. 67 

ing their attention to the study of brain tissue, in 
the hope of discovering the hidden connection 
between these tissues and thought, and of laying 
open the mysterious processes whereby the nutri- 
ent matter taken out of food may be transformed 
into energy, and this energy again transformed 
into thought. Without getting beyond matter, 
they have attempted to solve the problem of mind. 
Well, now, with this history back of it, and in 
pursuance of these methods, materialism has come, 
bearing the marks of its one-sided process. Out 
of such a history, such and only such a philoso- 
phy could come ; a philosophy dwarfed, half-devel- 
oped, uncomprehensive. We have directed atten- 
tion to the history and to the method, because 
thereby the system is explained as to its one-sided- 
ness. Carlyle once said that, '' It is not honest 
inquiry that makes anarchy, but it is error, insin- 
cerity and half-truths that make it." It is so with 
philosophy. To be a true system it must take 
into account all the facts, deal honestly with them, 
and explain them if possible; otherwise it becomes 
intolerant and altogether inadequate. Just as the 
idealism of Berkeley, which sought to explain all 
being in terms of mind, broke down because it 



6S MIND. 

failed to be comprehensive in that it did not ac- 
count for phenomena without us, so must this also 
be ruled out on the ground that it does not explain 
that which is within, or, if you please, because it 
fails to be comprehensive. 

Mind is ; matter is. Each is to be accounted 
for; neither is to be ignored nor explained in like 
terms with the other ; both are revealed in con- 
sciousness, and as objects of consciousness are to 
be explained. 

But before we go on to a criticism of this sys- 
tem, let us see precisely what we have to do. It 
affirms that nothing is but matter and its forces ; 
that all phenomena are to be accounted for as 
being the result of the operation of these two 
factors. We have, therefore, to show that mere 
matter and force cannot be made to account for 
the facts as they exist, and that no explanation 
but that which gives to mind a place distinct from 
matter and as determining matter, can explain 
phenomena as they appear, or the facts of con- 
sciousness as they exist, for it must not be over- 
looked that the facts of our inner experience are 
as real as the facts revealed in the sense, and that 
mental phenomena are as real as material. 



MIND. 69 

In determining, therefore, the validity of mate- 
rialism, let us consider three propositions : 

First, if matter alone is, diversity in human 
thought and action, the physical antecedents re- 
maining the same, cannot be explained. 

Second, if mind is matter and not an existence 
in itself, then is there nothing to which phenomena 
can appear, and phenomena cannot be interpreted. 

Third, if mind exists not apart from matter and 
as undetermined by matter, the new in art, litera- 
ture or invention could not be. Take, now, the 
first proposition : 

If matter alone is, diversity in human thought 
and action, the physical antecedents remaining the 
same, cannot be explained. If there is any one 
fact that the study of matter and force has con- 
firmed more than another, it is the immutability 
of their operations. Certain antecedents always 
precede certain consequents, and like effects in- 
variably follow like causes. It is the persuasion 
that Nature is invariable in her operations, that 
makes a science of nature possible. If Nature 
were variable, if certain antecedents with unvary- 
ing certainty did not precede certain consequents, 
no man could know Nature or formulate her laws. 



70 MIND. 

The sun rises to-day at his appointed place and 
time. The moon nightly drives her chariot through 
the sky along the same route she has journeyed 
since the morning of creation. Indeed, so unvary- 
ing is this uniformity that the very moment of her 
passage across the sun's disk may be foretold, 
the path of her shadow determined ; and when 
the predicted moment comes, she has reached 
her appointed place in the heavens and proceeds 
to drag her train of darkness over continents and 
seas in the fulfillment of her promise. 

The seasons, in obedience to well-determined 
laws, come and go. Day follows night, and night 
the day, while creation sings the same song she 
sang when the sons of God shouted for joy, and 
the morning stars first sang together. Take the 
principle of uniformity out of nature, and astron- 
omy as a science could not exist. The same is true 
of chemistry. The chemist knows that two elements 
subject to the same conditions will always unite 
with like result ; that certain causes always pro- 
duce certain effects and no other, and that, given 
the cause, the effect is the same, yesterday, to-day 
and forever. But rob the elements with which 
the chemist deals of this principle, of uniformity in 



MIND. 7 1 

action, and chemistry as a science could not be. 
The union of two elements to-day would produce 
heat, to-morrow cold ; two other elements in union 
to-day would produce a liquid, to-morrow a solid. 
As much may be said of Nature in whatever de- 
partment she is investigated. If Science is, it is 
because Nature is uniform ; because matter and 
force always act in certain ways, and can act in no 
other. But come now to man. In him, according 
to the dictum of materialism, nothing exists but 
force and matter, acting as they act elsewhere in 
the universe. But man is not uniform. Thoughts 
and acts are not uniform. Who can predict, if the 
antecedents be given, what the thought or the act 
may be } Having once determined how a man will 
act under certain circumstances and conditions, no 
one can say that under precisely the same con- 
ditions he will act as he did before. Indeed, so 
variable is human action, under circumstances pre- 
cisely identical, that the phrase, ** The unex- 
pected is what always happens," has passed into a 
proverb. 

Now this lack of uniformity, the various courses 
pursued by different individuals, and, indeed, by 
the same individual under circumstances precisely 



72 MIND. 

similar in character, cannot be explained if in man 
nothing exists but matter, and mind the product 
of matter is determined and conditioned by 
physical antecedents. There must, then, be uni- 
formity in human actions ; and the course that 
any one will pursue under given circumstances 
may be predicted with the same certainty that 
effects in the material world may be predicted 
when the antecedents are known. But that course 
cannot be predicted. And the only satisfactory 
explanation of this lack of uniformity in human 
action is found in the admission that in man there 
resides that which is undetermined and uncon- 
ditioned : something that determines a course of 
action purely out of itself, and that recognizes no 
conditions but those of its own being. Moreover, 
in all our attempts to influence or to determine 
beforehand a course of action for our fellow men, 
we recognize the truth that they have power to 
overstep all physical antecedents, and are able to 
act as though such antecedents were not existing. 
And thus, instead of bringing physical causes alone 
to bear, instead, for instance, of studying the in- 
fluence of air and diet and the like, we aim to 
determine the action, not by the physical, but by 



MIND. 73 

bringing into operation influences as far removed 
from the physical as can well be. 

And thus do we recognize that the controlling 
factors in human action are not matter and force, 
but that which has power to determine even these. 
And that in man not matter, but mind, is the 
controlling factor ; that motives are stronger than 
material forces, and that these determine for us a 
course of action m the very face of all physical 
antecedents. This is the method of all civili- 
zation and reform. Not the determining of mind 
through matter or material conditions, but the 
determining of material conditions through and by 
means of mind. 

And then, again, if there be nothing of us but 
matter under control of the same laws that govern 
matter in the world without us, it follows not only 
that actions with certain antecedents must be uni- 
form — the same physical cause always producing 
the same effects in thought and action — but also 
that such effects must follow immediately on the 
cause. There could never be such a thing as 
deferred action. It is because effects follow imme- 
diately on the presence of the cause, that we are 
able to affirm their connection or trace any certain 
effect to a certain definite cause. 



74 MIND. 

If the two phenomena did not co-exist, no man 
could affirm of a certain effect that it sprang from 
a certain cause. It is the close relationship in 
time of the two phenomena of cause and effect 
that enables us to affirm their connection. The 
moment the bolt leaps from the cloud, the tree is 
shivered into fragments. The moment the elec- 
tric current touches the steel, it becomes magne- 
tized. The moment I touch, inadvertently, a 
heated surface, the nerves concerned in automatic 
action cause the proper muscles to contract, and 
my hand is withdrawn. And thus it is wherever 
matter and force alone enter as factors. Well, 
now, grant that thoughts, grant that actions are 
effects of material changes in the substance of the 
brain, and that when these changes take place 
the thought and the act follow as the necessary 
effect of such change, and how, then, are you to 
explain deferred action } How are you to explain 
the fact that to-day you may determine to do a 
certain thing, and yet say to yourself, '^ I will not 
do this thing to-day, I will wait until to-morrow ** } 
How account for the fact that you may even 
appoint an hour, and say, '' I will do it then '' } 
By that time other changes have taken place in 



MIND. 75 

the brain structure which, on this principle, would 
impel you to do the very opposite of that upon 
which you had determined. But yet, faithful to 
your determination, you do precisely the thing 
that you determined to do, and at the precise 
moment appointed. Now, we insist upon it that 
this could not be, if action and thought were 
caused and determined alone by changes in the 
brain structure, and followed as the necessary 
effect of such changes. If that were the case, the 
effect would be immediate, if at all, and we could 
no more defer the action than we can defer the 
effect of the lightning, or hold back for a defi- 
nite period, the explosion of the projectile from 
the cannon after the powder has been exploded. 
It is therefore evident that if we would consist- 
ently explain the facts, we must go beyond matter 
and force ; in short, must acknowledge the presence 
and potency in man of that which is above matter, 
and undetermined by it. If actions, the physical 
antecedents of which are the same, may be diverse, 
and if the outgrowing of such action may be de- 
ferred, it follows that the cause of such action lies 
not in matter, but in that which is above matter 
and independent of it — that is in mind. 



^6 MIND, 

But come now to the second proposition : If 
mind is matter, and not an existence in itself, then 
is there nothing to which phenomena can appear, 
and phenomena cannot be interpreted. 

It was because the truth involved in this propo- 
sition was overlooked by Locke, that his system 
went asunder. The same truth is alike fatal to 
all sensuous philosophy. In every such system 
the fact is overlooked that it is mind that makes 
phenomena possible, and that until you have mind, 
you cannot have a phenomenal world. And yet 
men who advocate a purely sensuous philosophy 
are fond of talking of impressions and appear- 
ances. They speak of mind as ** a sheet of blank 
paper'' ; '* a clean tablet on which impressions are 
made by the sense.'' But the significant truth is 
overlooked, that when impressions are made on 
the paper or tablet they remain as simple impres- 
sions : they do not come to be ideas ; they never 
become knowledge. In man impressions become 
more than impressions : they become ideas ; in 
reflection united in one idea of substance, they 
become knowledge. 

To the mind, impressions are not what they are 
to the tablet ; the same is true of all phenomena. 



MIND, 77 

Before appearances can appear, there must be 
that to which they appear. We say phenomena 
appear. Very well ; but to what do appearances 
appear } The reply must be, '' They appear to the 
mind." But remember, now, that mind, according 
to this system, is matter, and matter is phenomena. 
Can phenomena appear to phenomena } and if 
so, how are we to explain the fact that fleeting 
impressions are constructed, put together in an 
idea of substance and thus become knowledge ? 
Knowledge is not appearance ; knowledge is not 
phenomena. Impressions may be made on a 
sensitive medium as they are on the sensorium. 
Images may be formed on the mirror as they 
are on the human retina, but there they remain ; 
they never become more than impressions. The 
mirror cannot know the object that appears ; the 
sensitive medium cannot interpret the impression, 
and, in either case, knowledge as such cannot be. 
And why } The answer is, These are mere mat- 
ter, because back of the impression there is noth- 
ing to interpret the impression ; nothing that has 
power to get out of fleeting impressions knowledge. 
There is nothing to which appearances appear. It 
is not so in man. Back of the appearance stands 



78 MIND. 

that to which appearances appear. In him there 
is that which has power to reflect upon the impres- 
sions as given in the sense, that looks upon the 
image as formed upon the retina, that interprets 
impression and image, and gets out of them 
knowledge. What, then, is this something back 
of phenomena that looks upon and interprets 
them ? Matter it cannot be. Mind, apart from 
matter, it must be. Remove mind and you have 
nothing left to which phenomena can appear, for 
it is by mind that phenomena are made possible, 
and until you have mind as existence, apart from 
matter, you cannot have a phenomenal world. 
And if even such a world could be, it could not 
possibly be known or understood by us. 

But again : it is alone as mind stands apart from 
matter and as unconditioned by it, that the new 
in art, literature or invention becomes possible. 
On no other condition is the new possible. Other- 
wise, to know one individual of a race or a country- 
would be to know all. To know what man has 
wrought and been would be to know what he may 
do and be throughout all ages. See how this is. 
The product of mere material agencies is unvari- 
able ; the characteristic foliage of the tree is ever 



MIND. 79 

the same ; the flower of the individual plant in 
a state of nature is from year to year the same. 
This holds whenever mere matter and force are 
the factors in the problem, and in that case we 
look in vain for the new. The principles of cor- 
relation and conservation of forces in the mate- 
rial world required that no new force shall come 
into action. But put this law relating to force 
side by side with that principle upon which all 
science rests, and without which no science could 
be, namely, that forces act, and must act as they 
have always acted hitherto, and what have you } 
This: that nothing new can come. Remember, 
now, that thought, according to the theory which 
we are discussing, and mind out of which thought 
comes, are but matter and force operating as they 
have always operated, and I ask. How are you to 
interpret a Milton or a Shakespeare in literature, 
a Locke or a Kant in philosophy, a Raphael or a 
Michael Angelo in art, a Mozart in music, or a 
Fulton in invention } Ignore mind, explain it as 
the product of matter, determined and conditioned 
by material antecedents, and you have left no room 
for progress in history, for genius in art, literature 
or invention. The new cannot be, and along the 



8o MIND. 

groove, worn by the march of ages, humanity must 
continue to journey forever. 

And so you see it comes to this : tested by 
those tests by which every system of philosophy 
must be tested, materiaHsm is found wanting. The 
first requirement of a true philosophy is that it be 
comprehensive. It must explain more than a few 
facts. It must be encyclopaedic ; must take into 
account the circle of experience — must explain all 
that is. In short, it must explain being ; and if it 
fails in this it lacks comprehensiveness, and, lacking 
this, must be cast aside as empty, false, and utterly 
inadequate as a system. Materialism may be able 
to explain man on the side on which he finds him- 
self linked to the brute ; but on the side by virtue 
of which he is truly man, and through which 
matter in him is transfigured and glorified, for 
that side materialism is unable to account. No 
philosophy that denies to mind a place as real 
and essential being, undetermined and apart from 
matter, can explain the facts as they are or the 
universe as it exists. But, it will be asked, is mind 
then, absolutely undetermined, and do not mental 
consequents follow physical antecedents in such a 
relation as that it may be affirmed that thoughts 



MIND. 8 1 

are determined by material impressions ? Is it 
not true that impressions given in the sense are 
taken up by the mind and woven by a process 
of reflection into ideas ; and is there not such a 
necessary connection between the material impres- 
sion and the mental idea as that it must be said 
that the idea is determined by the impression ? 
The answer is this : Whether the idea shall be 
determined by the impression alone, depends upon 
the mind itself. It goes without saying, that one 
and the same material impression excites different 
thoughts even in the same individual, to say noth- 
ing of the thoughts that such an impression may 
arouse in different persons. Similar sounds can- 
not be said to produce similar thoughts, or similar 
impressions produce similar ideas. The mind may 
occupy itself with phenomena, may even so far 
lose itself as to seldom rise above the merely 
sensuous ; but when this is the case, it is by its 
own consent, and not from necessity. From all 
determination by the material it has power to 
separate itself and to say ''By these I shall not 
be determined." It may shut itself up within 
itself, and in its operations shut out all impres- 
sions from without and dwell on the purely ideal, 



82 MIND. 

the transcendental. So, while a clear and some- 
times an intimate connection may appear to exist 
between physical antecedents and mental conse- 
quents, that connection is one, the influence of 
which, and the determining power of which, is, at 
least in the normal state, marked and limited by 
the mind's own choice, and is not a relation of 
necessity. But between these two conceptions 
there is the widest difference. If that relation is 
one of necessity, then is mind absolutely deter- 
mined by matter ; is, indeed, lost in matter. But 
if the relation is one of choice, as we have just 
shown, then mind may or may not be deter- 
mined, according as it chooses ; and is therefore 
left supreme, self-existent, self-determined. 

But what even if thought in the lower fields of 
its operations is sometimes influenced by material 
impressions ? Is mind then to be declared deter- 
mined ? Thought is one thing, mind is another. 
Thought is an emanation ; mind is the something 
that stands back ; the something out of which the 
thought emanates. The thought is evanescent ; 
the mind is permanent. It is that which stands 
back of the thought, brings thought into being, 
sits in judgment on it, and hence exists apart 
from it. 



MIND, 83 

And so it comes that no system that ignores 
mind as being in itself, no system that aims to 
mterpret the universe as it is, on the supposition 
that mind is conditioned or determined by matter, 
can lay claim to being a true philosophy. Every 
such system when practically applied can neither 
be made to explain the world without nor the world 
within us. Even in the writings of those who have 
been loudest in the defense of such systems, there 
is well-nigh universally to be found a manifest dis- 
trust of the doctrine. Few have defended it more 
stoutly than John Stuart Mill. But when he found 
himself face to face with its logical outcome, when 
he perceived that by it man became but a puppet, 
an automaton, he practically denied the very prin- 
ciples on which his entire system rested. Open 
his autobiography and read what he there says : 
'* I felt as if I were scientifically proved to be the 
helpless slave of antecedent circumstances ; as if 
my character and that of all others had been formed 
for us by agencies beyond our control and was wholly 
out of our power." A little further on you have 
this : '^ I saw that though our character is formed by 
circumstances, our own desires can do much to 
shape those circumstances. That we have real 



84 MIND. 

power over the formation of our own characters/' 
Now let me ask you not to overlook the fact that 
that last phrase is fatal to all that Mill had ever 
said in defense of his system. If man has power 
over the formation of his own character, as he 
admits, then it is manifest that that powder can 
come not out of matter, but out of mind, indepen- 
dent, uncontrolled and undetermined by matter. 
Well, now, seeing that the order of the materialist, 
in which matter is put first, and then mind, cannot 
be the true order, we have a right to ask whether 
the real order is not directly the reverse, and 
whether it be not first mind and then matter. 
First mind as unconditioned, then matter as con- 
ditioned and controlled by it. If we were per- 
mitted to get an answer from the metaphysician, 
it would be unqualifiedly in the affirmative. 

To the mind that has dealt fairly with the prob- 
lem it is no longer a question whether mind 
determines matter. It was long ago seen that 
without mind nature could not be ; and that until 
you have mind you cannot have nature. It was a 
saying of Kant's, that mind makes nature. By this 
he meant that, looking out on the universe, you 
have nothing but a disconnected crowd of impres- 



MIND. 85 

sions and ideas ; a cosmic mass, but no cosmos. 
And that until thought comes in and determines 
every object in its relations, nature could not be. 
From this we might go on, and, in the name of a 
true philosophy, affirm that that which conditions 
is before that which is conditioned. That if mind 
is, as it must be, the primary element in knowl- 
edge, it must also be the primary element in the 
universe. For if thought is prior in knowledge, it 
must be prior in being. But we are aware that 
against this method of reasoning, -the charge that 
we brought against a purely physiological study 
of man has also been urged. It has been urged 
that if it is unfair to look at man purely from 
the physiological side, it is likewise unfair to study 
him from the psychological. And yet that ob- 
jection cannot in the present case stand ; for we 
are investigating not the physical, but the mental 
in man, and are aiming to determine whether this 
that we call the mental can be explained in terms 
of matter and force. So far as man is material, he 
is to be studied by the physical method ; on this 
side he may be investigated as nature is investi- 
gated. But man has other than material ; he has 
also mental being, and as the nature philosopher 



86 MIND, 

may, with justice, insist that so far as the material 
in man is concerned, he be investigated by physical 
methods, on the other hand, with equal justice, 
we may demand that man as mental shall be 
studied, not by the physical, but by the trans- 
cendental method. And when so investigated, the 
conclusion can only be that at which the transcen- 
dental thinkers of Germany long since arrived, 
when they put thought as the primary element in 
the universe, and reasoned that if thought be prior 
in knowledge, it must be prior in being ; and that 
by mind nature is determined. 

But the same conclusion to which the transcen- 
dental thinkers came may also be reached by 
another method. And while the materialist, on 
account of the intimate relation sometimes found 
to exist between physical and mental states, rea- 
sons that the mental is determined by the physical, 
it will be found nearer to the truth to say, when 
such connection is observed to exist, that the 
physical has been determined by the mental, and 
that, instead of mind being determined by matter, 
in all of those cases in which mind is at all con- 
cerned, the reverse is true, and matter is deter- 
mined by mind. If mind and matter are, if they 



MIND. 87 

each have an existence, and stand in relation, as 
they certainly do in man, then must there be some 
point at which they may be said to touch, and the 
influence projected upward into the realm of mind 
from the material side, or downward into the realm 
of the material from the mental side. 

Among physiologists, it has come to be univer- 
sally recognized that the point at which mind 
touches matter in man is located in the brain. It 
is maintained that in the brain matter exists in 
its most refined and susceptible state. That the 
arrangement of its particles is such as to render 
the brain susceptible to the most delicate impres- 
sions and influences. And while this is affirmed 
on the one hand, it is just as stoutly held on the 
other that no action under voluntary control can 
take place expect as the brain is in some measure 
effected ; some change effected on its particles, and 
that the act follows as the direct and necessary 
effect of such cerebral disturbance. Now se-e 
what we have here. I move my arm. You arise 
from your chair and move across the room. How 
comes it that these acts are possible t You are 
to account for them, says the materialist, as the 
effects of disturbances in the cerebral substance. 



88 MIND. 

Certain particles of the brain were affected or 
disturbed, and the act followed as the direct and 
necessary effect of that disturbance. But, I ask, 
what caused the disturbance, the motion in these 
particles of the brain ? How came they to move ? 
When you willed to move your arm, the cause as 
affirmed lay in the motion of brain particles. But 
do you not perceive that this motion in the brain 
particles must also have had its cause ? On the 
brain cells some impression must have been 
made. But whence came that impression } Did 
it come from matter } If so, what was it and how 
came it } There is but one answer : it came from 
mind. An influence on the cerebral substance 
there doubtless was, but it came not from the 
realm of matter. Out of mind it cam.e, and was 
determined by mind. No man can account for 
voluntary action on any other ground. To explain 
it is to admit that matter is determined by mind, 
and that the determining factor must itself have 
been undetermined. 

But the operation of mind on matter has not 
come to its limit in the narrow field of its action 
on the substance of the brain. The horizon of its 
operations has by no means been reached when it 



MIND. 89 

has touched the hidden springs of action resident 
in the nerve fibers and cells of the brain. 

However it may come, we cannot reason away 
the conclusion that, insensibly, the mind makes 
the body more and more its organ, until at last it 
becomes possible to read the character of the mind 
that dwells within, by the fashion that it has given 
to the countenance, the eye, the tone of voice, 
and the general bearing of the individual. In the 
countenance we read the mind. When for any 
cause the mind chooses to occupy itself wdth the 
low and groveling, it can do so, but it cannot hide 
the thought from the close observer. As a brand 
was left on the brow of Cain, that told of what he 
had done, so will the degraded mmd leave its mark 
on the temple of the body, so that while itself un- 
seen, the character of the mind cannot be hid, and 
we are able to judge what it is, just as certainly as 
we judge the character of the artisan when we look 
upon his handiwork. 

Whatever objections may be urged against physi- 
ognomy, men still preserve their faith in it, and no 
individual can free himself from the persuasion 
that the countenance by and by becomes the 
mirror of the mind. Well has the question been 



90 MIND, 

asked : '' If physiognomy be without truth, why do 
the arts of the painter and the actor steadfastly keep 
their hold on mankind, and why are the demands on 
these not merely for pathognomonic, but also for 
physiognomic representations ? And how can the 
desire be explained which has existed from the 
earliest ages, and exists to the present day, to see 
any person who has been distinguished in any 
way whatever, for good or evil ? A desire which 
would be altogether meaningless without a belief 
in the correspondence of the external appearance 
with the inner being." 

We cannot but recognize the truth that mental 
characteristics stamp the bodily form of man, and 
that it is not by chance that a certain mind car- 
ries along with it a certain bodily form that is but 
the outward expression of itself. But we ask how 
is this to be explained except on the supposition 
that the body is informed by the indwelling mind, 
that it is the mental that determines the material 
in something, at least, after the same fashion that 
the artist stamps himself unconsciously on the 
canvas that he paints or the statue that he chisels .^ 
In the words of Mynster : '' It must be that the 
mind appropriates the body to itself and fashions 
it after its own scheme." 



MIND. 91 

But let us now reverse all this, and with those 
who deny to mind this determining power, endeavor 
to account for all these facts by making them the 
result of physical forces and material causes, and 
what have we ? We are then left absolutely with- 
out an explanation of the facts of our inner experi- 
ence, and all human achievements, civilization and 
progress in every department go without an ex- 
planation. Take away mind in its determining 
power over matter, leave nothing but the mate- 
rial and its forces, and you are not only left with- 
out an explanation of human progress, civilization 
and achievement, but you have destroyed that in 
virtue of which and by which these alone can be. 

Why is not Greece the same to-day that she was 
in the age of her pristine glory 1 In the signifi- 
cant language of Fairbain : ^' The voices of the gods 
are heard in her thunders that wander round the 
brow of Olympus ; in the breezes that murmur 
through the oaks of Dodona ; the names of the 
heroes glorify and immortalize the places where 
they fought and fell. There shines on Ther- 
mopylae and Salamis, Morgarten and Sempach, 
a light that never was on sea or shore, creative of 
the inspiration of the poet's dreams." '' Leave the 



9 2 MIND. 

physical, but change the psychical conditions and 
the man is changed. Greece has still her Ionic 
heavens, her laughing sea, the crystal air through 
which her sons can lightly trip. But neither to 
Greek nor Turk does the Periclean age return. 
The occasion can never be the cause. Mind, not 
matter, must explain the purpose and the progress 
of humanity." 

Moreover, the history of decline in the individual, 
as well as in the national life, proves that the dis- 
integration is not brought about by material causes. 
The material environment may remain precisely 
the same, and the change still go on. The most 
degraded races, as well as individuals, have lived 
under the most favorable conditions of air, food 
and climate, indeed under circumstances in which 
every material condition was calculated to bring 
about the most healthful examples of body and 
soul. And so, on the other hand, the grandest 
characters, the purest lives, the noblest in every 
department of the hum.an being, have come under 
conditions, and in the face of conditions the most 
adverse. 

It is not the material in any of its modes that 
determines what the individual or the race shall be. 



MIND. 93 

But what then does ? Open history and you will 
read the secret. The origin of disintegration 
and decline is to be found in the mental, not in 
the material conditions. In a false and corrupt 
philosophy, in a depraved and sensuous thinking 
are to be found the antecedents of decline. This 
it has been that has entered like a deadly poison 
into the veins of the civil, social, and national life, 
and worked out the death of the mighty empires 
of the past. From their origin to their end, mate- 
rial conditions remained the same. The mental 
alone changed. 

And so, too, has the history of every upward 
movement confirmed the truth that in the eleva- 
tion as well as in the degradation of men, the 
problems to be solved are not those that have to 
do with the material, but with the immaterial, the 
mental in man. And so it comes that, in man 
and in all that to which man stands in the relation 
of cause, mind, not matter, is the determining 
factor. 

But we have now come face to face with an- 
other question. In getting an answer to our first, 
namely, the relation of mind to matter in man, we 
have awakened another in regard to the relation 



94 MIND. 

of mind to matter in the universe ; there is other 
matter than that concerned in man. There is 
another world than the one within — an external 
world, full of organic and inorganic being.' What 
now is mind's relation to this 1 Is mind in this 
outer, as we have found it to be in the inner, 
the determining factor } In this outer world 
is mind also first } If we were allowed to 
get our answer from that great transcendental 
thinker, Immanuel Kant, it would be this : ''With- 
out mind, nature cannot be." '' It is mind that 
makes nature ; mind is in the universe as its cause 
and condition." If knowledge of the external 
world can be, it can be alone as mind in man 
stands face to face with mind in nature, alone as 
a rational being stands face to face with a rational 
world. Thus would Kant have answered our ques- 
tion. Looking, therefore, fairly at the problem, we 
shall, I think, come to the conclusion, that in the 
external world as in the internal, mind must be 
the determining factor. That as human products 
in art and literature, in invention and the like, are 
to be accounted for alone as mind is presupposed, 
so, in the external world, phenomena are to be 
explained alone on the admission that mind has 
been pre-existent. 



MIND. 95 

*' Show us a God in nature ; prove that nature is 
his work," says the materiahst, ''and we will be- 
lieve." Now there is a contradiction of terms in 
that demand. The materialist has no right to 
speak of nature. What is nature 1 It is the cos- 
mos ; the orderly, harmonious system that lies 
without us. Nature is the living impersonal, 
which is the opposite of mind and idea, but is 
exclusively appointed to be the means, organ, 
instrument for mind and idea, and in its normal 
condition is exclusively determined by these. 

But let us take the materialist at what he means, 
and let us see in how far his demand may be met 
and a God in nature be pointed out. We have 
space but for two propositions. 

First : It is alone as mind is postulated that the 
manifest uniformity of construction in nature in 
the organic world can be explained. Stoutly have 
men like Herschel, Clerk Maxwell and others, 
maintained that this uniformity of construction in 
the so-called products of nature, infallibly stamps 
them as manufactured articles, not as the products 
of irrational agencies, but of an intelligent agent, 
designing uniformity of product. Now notice 
what led them to this conclusion. They ob- 



96 MIND. 

served that material agencies produced effects 
when left free to operate. That water rounded 
pebbles, that it produced soil, and that in one way 
and another the irrational agencies of the material 
world produced their products. But it was also 
observed that these products were characteristic. 
They were characteristic in that they lacked uni- 
formity ; the pebbles were rounded, but they were 
rounded irregularly. The soil was irregular in the 
size of its grains, and variable in its constitution. 
It was also noticed that wherever the mere blind 
forces of matter were left to themselves, that this 
lack of uniformity was always the result. But it 
was likewise observed that this was not the case 
in the products of the organic world. That, on 
the contrary, they always appeared as though 
fashioned after a pattern. Two ants were more 
alike than two pebbles. Two leaves of the same 
family, while vastly more complicated in structure, 
were more alike than two particles of soil. And 
so on all through the organic world. Uniformity 
of product was always found to be characteristic 
of all nature products. 

Then they asked. How came this uniformity ? 
They remembered that between two pieces of 



MIND, 97 

metal cast in the same mold, there was the closest 
resemblance. Between two pieces of machinery- 
made after the same pattern, there was likewise 
an intimate resemblance. But in the cases of the 
piece of metal and the piece of machinery, the like- 
ness was to be accounted for in the fact that they 
had been made after a pattern. And so uniformity 
of product in the cases cited, pointed back to an in- 
telligent agent in whose mind the pattern existed 
before it took shape in the metal piece or in the 
finished machine. 

And thus with these data they came to the only- 
conclusion to which a fair process of reasoning 
could bring them, and said, that if uniformity of 
product in the one case proved the priority of 
mind in which the pattern was wrought out, so 
did it likewise in the other. They reasoned that 
uniformity in nature proved a pattern, and that a 
pattern proved an intelligence pre-existing and 
conditioning matter. 

Now let it not be overlooked, that to no other 
conclusion, reasoning from the facts, could Her- 
schel or Clerk Maxwell have come. In the study 
of species there was found to have existed a pat- 
tern. And it was equally certain that without 



98 MIND, 

this pattern to which each individual might be 
referred, species could not be differentiated or a 
science of the organic world made out. The pat- 
tern accounted for the uniformity, the uniformity 
proved the pattern. 

But if there was a pattern, then mind alone could 
have conceived it. And hence back of nature, pre- 
existing and conditioning it, mind must have been. 
But come now to the second proposition : 

Without mind pre-existent and determining mat- 
ter, nature could not be interpreted, or a science 
of nature formulated. 

Let it be understood that there is no argument 
formulated by skepticism for the overthrow of 
theism, that does not operate with equal force 
against itself. Every attempt to demonstrate the 
impossibility of a knowledge of God, tells with 
equal force against the possibility of all knowl- 
edge. The validity of the principle that makes 
science possible, makes theology also possible. 
If nature can be known, God also can be known. 
See how this is. Ask the question, How comes it 
that nature can be interpreted, and in virtue of 
what is such interpretation possible } Do not 
overlook the fact that when the scientist comes 



MIND, 99 

to nature he comes to it with the conviction that 
it is an harmonious whole. That it stands together 
as the parts of a system, part related to part, and 
each interpreting the whole. But suppose that 
nature lacked this unity, suppose that one part 
sustained no relation to another, and had no pur- 
pose in itself. Suppose that one phenomenon 
stood to another as the pebbles on the seashore 
stand to each other, unconnected, unrelated, and 
whence then could Science come or what would be 
its foundation ? You cannot interpret a confused 
mass of pebbles or from such a mass deduce a 
science. But you can understand the plant, and 
out of a study of it you can deduce a science. 

You cannot interpret a mass of soil, but you 
can interpret the insect, and when you have studied 
it, and observed the relation of one of its parts to 
another, you have what we call science. But how 
comes this } There is and can be but one answer ; 
there is thought in the one, there is no thought 
in the other. Matter in itself cannot be inter- 
preted ; cannot be known. The more it has been 
studied the more positive has become the convic- 
tion that we must remain ignorant of it. But let 
matter be lifted out of its normal condition ; let it 



I OO MIND, 

be transfigured and inwrought by mind ; let parts 
be brought into relation, then do we know not, 
indeed, the matter, but the relation, the schema, 
and this it is that makes knowledge. Let the 
base matter of gases and minerals in the labora- 
tory of the plant, take form and relation in 
root, and branch, and leaf, fiber, and flower ; let 
the unrelated matter once come into relation as 
it does in the anatomy of the insect ; let base mat- 
ter come into relation in molecules or in worlds, 
and then does knowledge become possible, and 
sciences are built up. But, observe in what this 
knowledge really consists. It is not the mat- 
ter, though now in its organized forms, that you 
know ; it is the schema, the relations, the mind 
evidenced in these relationships that becomes an 
object of knowledge. This it is that makes science, 
and this alone. It is thought in nature that makes 
nature knowable. Except as nature has been in- 
formed by mind, it cannot be known. To be ration- 
ally apprehended, nature must first be rational. To 
be known by mind, it must first embody mind and 
envisage that by virtue of which it alone can be 
known. 

Enter the workshop of the mechanic. He is 



MIND. loi 

shaping the various parts of a machine, the plan 
of which he has worked out in his mind. Around 
you are curiously wrought pieces of wood, and iron, 
and steel ; but they are as yet disconnected, un- 
related ; but a mass of material. Can yet get even 
from these already fashioned pieces, anything that 
you would call knowledge } Can you interpret 
them } The mechanic may, for he knows the 
relation of part to part. But this relation does 
not appear to you, and hence you cannot interpret 
them. But let the parts be put together so that 
you may begin to see the relation of part to part, 
and of each part to the whole. Let the process go 
on until the machine stands before you, the living 
embodiment of the designer's idea ; then what was 
before an incoherent mass, becomes that which 
can be understood by the intellect, and you have 
added to your knowledge. But what made the 
interpretation possible } Fix your attention on 
that. How came it that you could interpret the 
mechanism in the one case, and not in the other } 
When you understood it, it was because you read 
the thought that was embodied in it ; because you 
saw in the completed work an idea ; because reason 
in the machine spoke to reason in you ; because 



102 MIND, 

mind spoke to mind ; because the mechanism 
sprang from mind and embodied mind : in virtue 
of this were you able to know it ; without this 
it could not have become knowledge, for it was 
mind that gave it meaning. 

To make the matter, if possible, still clearer, 
take Berkeley's illustration. On the ruins of Assy- 
rian temples, on the walls of the tombs of Karnak, 
amid the crumbling ruins of Mexico, are to be 
found wonderful signs and inscriptions written 
there by the ancient races. To scholars, these in- 
scriptions are full of meaning. By patient study, 
by a careful comparison of alphabet with alpha- 
bet, the known with the unknown, scholars have 
solved the meaning of these inscriptions, and read 
the history of nations long since passed away. 
But the thing that makes the interpretation of 
these inscriptions possible is that they contain 
thought. Unless they had contained thought, 
''The wild raven, or the lion with his claws, might 
have scratched figures on the rocks, but then, no 
man could have read them." They would then 
have expressed no thought, therefore could not 
have been interpreted. It is thought embodied 
in these inscriptions that makes them possible of 



MIND. 103 

interpretation. Well, now, go out into nature. 
You say you can understand it. To you it is a 
grand, beautiful, harmonious system. You see in 
it relations so invariable that you can get out of 
them the various sciences. Now what follows } 
This : you could not understand nature, if nature 
were not rational, or if it embodied not thought. 
It is mind in nature that makes nature knowable ; 
rid it of mind, and no man could know it, for it is 
mind in nature, manifested in relationships, that 
makes it knowable. Alone as mind in man stands 
face to face with mind in nature, can knowledge 
or science be. And so, out of a true analysis of 
man, as well as out of a true analysis of nature, 
the place of mind in the universe is determined. 
In man, if knowledge can be, in nature, if nature 
can be interpreted, mind must be first. The un- 
conditioned before the conditioned, the undeter- 
mined before the determined. Mind in man is 
the condition of knowledge. Mind in nature, its 
archetype and interpretation. 

It was the vision of this, the perception of mind 
in nature, speaking to mind in man, that led 
Tennyson to ask of his soul the question : — 



104 MIND, 

" The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, 

The hills, and the plains. 
Are not these, O, soul, the vision of 

Him who reigns ? 

** Is not the vision He ? Though He be not 

That which He seems ? 
Dreams are true while they last, and 

Do not we live in dreams ? 

*' Dark is the world to thee, thyself art 

The reason why, 
For is He not all but thou, that hast 

Power to feel, ' I am I ' ? 

" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and 

Spirit with spirit can meet. 
Closer is He than breathing and nearer 

Than hands and feet. 

" And the ear of man cannot hear, and 
The eye of man cannot see ; 

But if we could hear and see this 
Vision — were it not He 1 " 



LIFE. 

" I affirm that no shred of trustworthy experimental testimony 
exists to prove that life in our day has ever appeared indepen- 
dently of antecedent life." — Tyndall. 

" That dead matter cannot produce a living organism, is the 
universal experience of the most eminent physiologists. Life can 
be produced from life only. " — " The Unseen Universe. '* pp. 2 29 
230. 



LIFE. 

In him was life. — Jno. i : 4. 

In the year 1809 there was born in Shrewsbury, 
England, a boy whose name, in after years, was to 
be inseparably connected with a theory which, 
more than any other, was to disturb the current 
of the religious and scientific thinking of his 
times. His name was Charles Robert Darwin. 
From his infancy he was in love with nature ; 
roaming the hillsides, or wandering alone in the 
sequestered forest that stood not far distant from 
his father's dwelling, young Charles in his leis- 
ure moments might have been seen looking with 
boyish curiosity at every thing that he saw ; study- 
ing, in his boyish way, the various forms of ani- 
mate life that peopled the downs, the stream, or 
the pond. This was his favorite pastime. 

Thus, early cultivating the acquaintance of na- 
ture, she revealed to him her secrets, and when het 
came to manhood he understood her as did few 

107 



io8 LIFE. 

Others of his time. In 1859 he published his work 
entitled '' The Origin of the Species by means of 
Natural Selection," which at once attracted the 
attention of the thinking world. Not that the 
theory, which in this work he advocated, was new ; 
it had been the favorite theory of certain thinkers 
centuries before. But in him it received a new 
impetus, and out of his wealth of nature knowledge, 
in the estimation of some, it also received new 
corroboration. Though as much may not be said 
of many of his disciples, it is due Mr. Darwin to 
say that he was sincere. He firmly believed that 
the system of evolution was the system according 
to which nature could best be explained ; and so, 
in the interests of that system, he spent his life. 
When one reflects on the kind of a man that Mr. 
Darwin was — his kindness of heart, his nobility of 
nature, his honesty of investigation — a feeling of 
regret can hardly be repressed on account of the 
fact that his name has come to be inseparably 
associated with a theory so soon to be discarded ; 
for already the verdict of Science is against evolu- 
■^tion. Here and there on the list of investigators 
may still be found, associated with this system, 
the name of an investigator of some prominence. 



LIFE. 109 

Spencer, Haeckel, Bastian, and a few others, are 
still on the side of evolution. But, as a system of 
nature, evolution has lived its day. Faulty as a 
theory, and unsubstantiated by fact, by the fore- 
most of modern scientists it is at present rejected. 
Tyndall, Mivart, Dawson, Dana, and a host of 
others who are unquestionably leading the van of 
modern scientific thought, as well as shaping the 
thought of the future, are against it. 

But whatever may be our judgment of the theory 
that Mr. Darwin advocated so earnestly, it cannot 
be denied that the discussion which sprang up 
around it has been of immense profit. For, by 
that discussion, the attention of men has again 
been turned back to an old problem, and new 
attempts made to solve it. I speak of the problem 
of life. Stimulated by what Mr. Darwin said, new 
attempts have of late been made at its solution, 
and the question has again been asked, How is the 
presence of life in the world to be accounted for ? 
In his w^ork on ''The Origin of the Species," Mr. 
Darwin plainly affirmed it as his conviction that 
the development of the species was a natural pro- 
cess. He affirmed, that, starting with life, varia- 
tion, heredity, and natural selection, are sufficient 



no LIFE, 

to account for the varied forms of organic life. 
But to his credit let it be remembered that the 
theory of evolution, as held by him, was never 
meant to explain facts which others of his school 
have vainly attempted to make it cover. He never 
meant that the theory of evolution should be made 
to account for life as to its origin. And it has 
been the unwarranted assumptions of many, whose 
names have been mentioned in the same cate- 
gory, that has brought the system of Mr. Darwin 
into disrepute. Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, 
and others, while usually classed along with Mr. 
Darwin as evolutionists, are not evolutionists, in 
the sense in which Mr. Darwin was an evolutionist. 
With them, development is made to account for 
all ; not only for new species and forms, but 
for life itself. They affirm that matter holds 
withm itself ^' the promise and potency of all 
life,'' and that when matter is brought into certain 
relations, life may be evolved out of it. And thus 
with them evolution is a causal theory . . . 
given but matter and force, and out of these may 
be evolved all that is, or that can be. Matter 
and force are the creators of life. 

Not so did Mr. Darwin regard the theory of 



LIFE. Ill 

evolution. With him it was never intended to be 
anything other than a modal theory. He meant 
it simply to describe the process according to 
which nature worked. He started with life, and 
held that back of it in our search for its origin, 
experimental science could not go. He believed 
that if the origin of life was to be found, it could 
be found alone by transcending the limits of the 
experimental ; in short, life in his judgment was to 
be referred to the miraculous interference of an 
intelligent Creator at least to initiate the process. 
But once having life in the world, then he held 
that the system of evolution could be made to 
account for the almost infinite variety of its 
manifestations. And thus you see, that between 
these views of evolution, especially in their re- 
lation to the great problem as to the origin of life, 
there is not only a wide, but also a most essential 
difference. As held by Mr. Darwin, evolution not 
only left room for, but it indeed demanded the 
interference of an intelligent Creator at least to 
initiate the process. But as held by the opposite 
wing of the evolutionist school, evolution denies 
the interference of a Creator and is little else but a 
synonym for atheism. It deifies matter and force, 
and makes out of them its God. 



112 LIFE, 

Now, with this system as held by Mr. Darwin, 
we have nothing to do in the present discussion. 
Whether it has proved itself adequate to the test 
even as a modal theory we shall let others more 
competent than ourselves decide. It is only in so 
far as the theory of evolution bears on the ques- 
tion as to the origin of life, only so far as it is 
made a causal theory, does it concern us now. 
What has been the origin of life } Has life been 
evolved out of matter according to certain fixed 
laws t Or is its presence in the world to be attrib- 
uted as Mr. Darwin attributed it, to something 
higher than matter ; in short, to a personal Creator, 
who possessing life in himself, at some time com- 
municated that life to the non-living matter of the 
present world 1 To make ourselves acquainted 
with the more recent investigation as bearing on 
these great questions, is at present the task 
before us. 

To begin, therefore : our first aim must be to get 
a clear conception of what is, in strictness, living 
matter. For I need hardly tell you that apart from 
matter we cannot study life at least by the experi- 
mental method. Even if we could form some 
mental conception of what life in itself may be, we 



LTFE. 113 

could never be certain as to the correctness of our 
ideas. Their correctness could never be scien- 
tifically established, for life can be studied alone 
as it exists in living matter. But now as to 
what is in reality living matter, there is among 
many a very erroneous notion ; and few terms in 
our common conversation are more loosely used 
than this term ''living.'* In our study of the 
plant here, one of the first things that attracts 
our attention is a steady process of expansion, in 
the on-going of which nutrient matter is assimi- 
lated and changed into the material of root and 
stem and leaf and flower. This process we call 
growth. And when we wish to distinguish be- 
tween the plant and some inanimate object, we 
speak of it as living. In the brute and in man we 
observe a like process of consumption and regener- 
ation ; and when speaking of either, we again make 
use of this term and speak of the '' living " brute or 
the '' living " man, as the case may be. And thus we 
have come to regard the entire structure of the 
plant, of the brute, and of man, as living. But 
such is not in reality the case. By far the greater 
part of every so-called living structure is not living 
at all, but is dead or formed material Not more 



114 LIFE. 

than one fifth of the material in the human body, 
or in the framework of the plant yonder, is really 
alive, or can properly be called living matter. The 
only part in any structure that is really alive, is 
those little masses of semi-fluid matter to which 
the older biologists gave the name cells. If there- 
fore our aim is to make ourselves acquainted with 
living matter, we must not only begin, but we must 
also end with the cell, for, apart from it, we shall 
nowhere in the present world find life to be in 
association. 

And now that we may get a proper conception 
of what a cell is, and hence some idea of what 
the nature of living matter is, let us suppose an 
experiment. 

We have here, let us say, a grain of wheat. If, 
now, we drop it into a vessel containing water, it 
will soon send out its tiny roots downward, and a 
little shoot, destined to become the stem, upward. 
If, after a reasonable time has elapsed, we were 
to take one of these little shoots, and by a 
delicate movement of the section knife were to 
cut a very thin section from it, and then examine 
the section thus obtained with a microscope, we 
would find it to be composed largely of exceed- 



LIFE, 115 

ingly small round or oval globules closely packed 
together. These are the cells ; but as you look 
at them now, they present very much the same 
appearance that a mass of frozen drops of water 
would present ; for as they lie thus together in a 
compact mass you see nothing but their outlines, 
and would hardly suspect their being made up of 
parts. But if instead of the pure water in w^hich 
the little root grew, you had used water with 
which an ammoniacal solution of carmine had been 
united, the section would on examination present 
quite a different appearance from the one it pre- 
sented before. For as the process of growth would 
now go on, the carmine fluid, taken up by the pores 
of the root, would stain the cells, so that, instead 
of appearing as before, perfectly transparent and 
homogeneous, they would now be found to be 
made up of parts. Inside the fluid mass of the cell 
would be found one or more bodies called nucleus 
or nuclei, according to the number, and in addition 
to these, outside the fluid mass w^ould be observed 
a membrane or wall. In short, we would find that 
each cell instead of being constituted of a simple 
mass of homogeneous protoplasm, is in reality 
made up of three parts : the wall ; the fluid mass 



Il6 LIFE. 

within the wall ; and the little body called the 
nucleus. Essentially the same appearance would 
be presented, if instead of a thin section of a 
plant we were to substitute a small piece of 
animal tissue. For when stained with the car- 
mine fluid the cells contained within it will like- 
wise be found to be made up of the three parts 
already named ; the cell wall, its fluid contents or 
bioplasm, and the nucleus. 

Now, until recently, most biologists regarded 
the cell, made up as we have learned of its three 
parts, as the only material form with which life 
could be associated. They insisted that wherever 
life was, there also was the cell with its three 
parts ; they called the cell ^' the ultimate mor- 
phological unit;" and by that they meant that 
these little bodies alone were concerned in vital 
action, and that by them every tissue whether of 
bone, or muscle, or nerve, or bloodvessel was built 
up. It was held that these were the machines by 
whose agency every organism in the category of 
organic being has been wrought and fashioned ; 
here they have busied themselves in the building 
of the flower with its stamens, its petals, its pistil 
and seed lobes ; there building the bones, the 



LIFE. 1 1 7 

framework of the human body; here fashioning 
the membrane of the ear, there the delicate and 
wondrous senses of the eye : everywhere taking 
of the unformed material and working out of it 
the various parts of the limitless forms of organic 
life. 

Now the work that is done by these little artisans, 
the cells, was held to be this : to transform dead 
material into living material, and then this again 
into the formed material of the tissues. For every 
part of an organism when once built up has been 
fashioned out of dead material in the workshop of 
life. Every formed part was once dead material, 
then transformed into living material, then de- 
posited as formed material ; and so while it is true 
that the greater part of every organism is dead, 
yet every particle of it was once alive ; for it is by 
being made living, that former material is wrought 
out of dead matter. 

But see how these cells accomplish their work. 
Here, let us say, is one of these living units, a cell, 
possessing as it does the power of changing non- 
living matter into living, and then again in its 
tiny workshop, working this living matter into 
formed material ; the dead matter out of which it 



Ii8 LIFE. 

is to build is called pabulum. Well, here is our 
cell surrounded by this nutrient matter, or, as it 
is called, pabulum. Now watch the progress as it 
goes on. The first thing observed, is the minute 
particles of pabulum passing through the cell wall 
into the interior of the cell. Here it comes in 
contact with the bioplasm or living matter that is 
inclosed by the cell wall. When the pabulum 
once comes in contact with the bioplasm of the 
cell, it is at once changed into living matter or 
bioplasm. Then losing again its life, that which 
was once pabulum, and in its second stage bioplasm, 
is now deposited inside the cell wall as formed 
material. At first we would observe this formed 
material appearing as a thin film on the inner 
surface of the cell, the film gradually becoming 
thicker and thicker by the gradual deposition of 
the formed material. 

Thus we should see our little artisans building 
up tissue after tissue, and effecting that wonder- 
ful phenomenon called growth. Out of the non- 
living pabulum, the bioplasm of the cell makes 
living matter, and while in the living state works 
it into the formed material, of which every organ- 
ism, whether of plant or animal, is in the main 
composed. 



LIFE. 1 1 9 

But now we have come to a point at which I 
must ask you to make a distinction. If we are to 
study life in the light of the most recent investi- 
gation, we must distinguish between what was 
formerly and what is now regarded as living mat- 
ter. The necessity of this distinction arises from 
the fact that recent investigation has shown the 
former biologists to have been in error in regard 
to the answer given to the question as to what is 
distinctively living matter. It was held formerly 
as I have already indicated, that living matter is 
the cell as such, and biologists spoke of it as the 
"living unit." But at present, with a better 
knowledge than was then had, it is almost univer- 
sally felt, that either the definition then given of 
what a cell is must be discarded, or else so enlarged 
as to make it cover any simple mass of bioplasm. 
As a consequence, the answer that is now given 
to the question. What is a cell } is quite different 
from the answer given to the same question years 
ago. Prior to the year 1869, a cell was described 
as we have described it : as a living unit made 
up of three parts ; cell-wall, fluid contents, and 
nucleus. It was then held that life belonged alone 
to the cell as thus constituted. At present, how- 



120 LIFE. 

ever, it is clearly established that two of these 
parts are not essential to the presence of life, and 
do not necessarily belong to living matter. But 
that life may be when both cell-wall and nucleus 
are absent, and nothing present but the fluid con- 
tents or bioplasm. In other words, it is now set- 
tled that bioplasm alone is living matter. 

Well, now, I have called your attention to this 
because of this fact, that you will often hear the 
statement that the cell theory has been aban- 
doned ; and I wanted you to understand the 
precise feature of it that has been outlived. Its 
defect was, that it defined the cell as a living 
unit made up of the three parts already mentioned, 
and narrowed life down to the cell as thus defined. 
And when it was afterward found, as we shall 
presently learn, that life was not confined to the 
cell as such, but existed where nothing was but 
simple bioplasm ; that the wall and nucleus were 
in no way essential, and that the smallest mass of 
bioplasm might with perfect propriety be called a 
cell, in that it did all that the former biologists 
attributed to the cell, then was the cell theory, 
so far at least as its definition is concerned, aban- 
doned and the fact established that bioplasm alone 



LIFE, 121 

is living matter. To-day, outside of Germany, the 
cell theory with its defective definition has but 
few advocates. Originating as it did with the 
great German naturalist, Schleiden, it may per- 
haps be, that a reverence for its great originator 
has had something to do with its present hold in 
the Fatherland. But however that may be, its 
essential defects have long since been demon- 
strated. Early in the present century the emi- 
nent physiologist Fletcher pointed out the error 
in the cell theory, as then held, and showed that 
its definition of living matter was too narrow. He 
proved that in some cases, at least, living matter 
was structureless and that life was not contingent 
on matter arranged as it was in the cell. But 
while Fletcher headed the movement that has 
since culminated in what is now called the Proto- 
plasmic Theory of Life, it remained for Lionel 
Beale to demonstrate the truthfulness of the posi- 
tion that Fletcher took. In his work on Bioplasm 
and also in that entitled How to Work With the 
Microscope, this unsurpassed investigator conclu- 
sively shows the error of the cell theorists, and 
establishes on the one hand, that life is not con- 
tingent on the presence of either cell wall or 



122 LIFE. 

nucleus, and on the other, that both cell-wall and 
nucleus are but after products, the results of bio- 
plasmic action. By Beale, living matter was nar- 
rowed down to one single substance, viz ; the fluid 
contents of the cell ; for when you have taken 
away the little bodies in the interior and also 
the membrane on the exterior, you still have left 
the semi-fluid mass. Well, now, w^hen Beale found 
that both the cell wall and the nucleus might be 
absent and life still be present, he came to the 
only conclusion at which it was possible for him 
to arrive, which was, that life had alone to do with 
the fluid contents of the cell ; that it alone was 
living matter. He then showed that wherever it 
was present life was also present ; that when it 
was absent life was also absent. To this semi- 
fluid mass, always found within the living cell, he 
gave the name bioplasm. 

But see now how Beale proved that bioplasm 
alone is living matter. His proof rests on a prin- 
ciple well known to every one at all acquainted 
with microscopical technology ; the principle of 
selective stains. In order to illustrate the method 
by which Beale proved his position, let us once 
more suppose an experiment. Let us suppose 



LIFE. 123 

that we have here a thin transparent tissue taken 
from some portion of the animal body. If it has 
been selected with a view to our experiment, it 
will contain in it, muscular fiber, connective tissue, 
blood vessels, nerve threads and cells. But having 
placed it under the microscope, you will find it 
well-nigh impossible to differentiate the various 
tissues ; the structure will appear nearly homoge- 
neous. There are the nerve fibers, but you cannot 
trace them on account of the fact that they present 
the same appearance as the surrounding tissues. 
There is living matter and formed material, but 
you cannot distinguish the one from the other. 
Well, now, if you remember that the chemical 
constitution of each of these parts differs from the 
chemical constitution of the others, you will under- 
stand why it is that different chemical compounds 
will act on these various parts in different ways. 
One compound will stain one particular tissue, 
say the muscle, while it will have no effect what- 
ever on the nerve fiber. Another fluid will take 
hold of the living matter and give to it a certain 
color, and at the same time leave the formed mate- 
rial unchanged. 

Take, now, the tissue which a moment ago we 



124 LIFE, 

put under the microscope, and which then ap- 
peared to be perfectly homogeneous ; put it here 
for a few moments in a watch-glass containing a 
solution of picro carmine. If you now examine it, 
you will find that you have stained the connective 
tissue and the nuclei a bright red, while the muscle 
has retained its normal color. Now transfer it to 
a vessel containing water to which a few drops of 
acetic acid have been added, and when thoroughly 
saturated transfer it to a solution of safranine, and 
you will observe that you have now succeeded in 
staining the muscle and the epithelium. If now 
you put the tissue again under the microscope, it 
will present quite a different appearance from that 
which it presented in the first instance. You have 
now, on account of the difference in color of the 
various tissues, no difficulty in differentiating each 
particular one, any more than you would have in 
selecting the white threads from the black in a 
cotton fabric. 

Now it was the application of this principle of 
selective stains to the various tissues of living 
organisms, that furnished Beale with the facts 
whereby he sustained his position that the thin, 
viscid material found in the cell, alone was alive. 



LIFE. 125 

He found that when a portion of animal or vege- 
table tissue was immersed in a solution of carmine, 
the living matter was always stained by the fluid. 
By repeated experiments he proved that wherever 
there was living matter, the carmine was sure to 
find it, select it out, communicate to it its color, so 
that when examined under the microscope it be- 
came an easy thing to distinguish the living matter 
from the dead or formed material. What now 
became of the cell theory when this selective 
power of carmine was discovered and its affinity 
for living matter established, I have already indi- 
cated. By the carmine process it was shown that 
the cell-wall was simply formed material ; that it 
did not live. Through it to the interior of the cell 
the carmine fluid passed and repassed, and while it 
never failed to stain the bioplasm within, it had 
no effect on the cell-wall itself. Thus it was 
shown that not the membrane, but that which 
was contained within the membrane was the essen- 
tial thing. That the cell-wall had no more to do 
with life than the shell which the snail secretes 
has to do with the life of the snail itself ; and that 
as the shell of the snail is but the secretion and 
after product of the living animal, so is the cell- 



126 LIFE, 

wall but the product of the living bioplasm within. 
But as the cell-wall was thus proven to be not an 
essential element, so also with the nucleus and 
nuclei ; for it was found that bioplasm in a com- 
paratively quiescent state is not unfrequently 
entirely destitute of either. In many of the fungi 
and lichens the nucleus was found to be wanting, 
and the same was found true even in many forms 
of the amoebae. It is the oft-expressed opinion 
of Beale that the nucleus and nuclei, like the cell- 
wall, are after products, and that the bioplasm 
having been first formed, these appear in it after- 
ward as new centers of growth or of more intense 
vital activity. He believed that while they possess 
the same composition as the material of bioplasm, 
they by no means constitute an essential factor, 
from the fact that life may exist w^hether they be 
present or absent. 

Well, now you see what, as the result of recent 
investigation, has become of the cell theory as 
such. It held that the cell, made up of the 
nucleus, cell-wall and fluid contents, was a living 
unit ; that the phenomenon of life could be mani- 
fested alone when each and all of these were pres- 
ent and existed together as a unit. But when it 



LIFE. 127 

was found that the cell-wall was often wanting, 
and that the nucleus was by no means invariably 
present — in short, when it was found that bio- 
plasm was the only element that could not be 
dispensed with and life yet be present — then was 
not only the cell theory abandoned, but the fact 
also established that bioplasm alone lives ; it alone 
is living matter. Now that was a great step. 
You can see at a glance that it wonderfully sim- 
plified the problem of life, in that it narrowed 
living matter down to one simple homogeneous 
substance, the transparent and colorless, and, so 
far as can be ascertained by examination with the 
highest powers, perfectly structureless, bioplasm. 
But having made this advanced step towards the 
solution of the great question, another was imme- 
diately attempted. When it was settled that pro- 
toplasm, or to use Beale's term, bioplasm, was the 
only living substance, then the nature of bioplasm 
itself became the subject of investigation. It was 
asked, May not this living substance be produced } 
May not its chemical formula be determined, so 
that by a proper combination of the elements 
entering into its composition, living matter may 
be evolved } For is not life, after all, but the 



128 LIFE. 

result of the union of chemical elements united 
in a certain way and in certain proportions? 
Well, these are the questions at which scientific 
men have assiduously been working for more than 
a quarter of a century, and with what results we 
shall presently see. Clearly the first thing to 
be determined was, whether this living matter is 
identical in all living structures. If bioplasm is 
not identical, if the bioplasm of the oak, or the 
flower, differs from the bioplasm of the amoeba 
or man, if that of the most simple living structure 
is not the same as that of the most complex, then 
the question would have been indeed a most intri- 
cate one. But that difficulty did not stand in the 
way. By the aid of the microscope and the vari- 
ous tests known to the chemist, bioplasm was 
found to be identical, and the fact established 
that wherever found it has always the same com- 
position. It has been proven that the bioplasm 
of the embryo is the same as that of the adult ; 
that that of the most inveterate morbid growth 
could not be distinguished from that of the healthy 
tissue, and that even the bioplasm of the lowest 
fungus is the same as that of the brain of man. 
And thus you see what have been some of the 



LIFE. 129 

results of these recent years of biological investi- 
gation. To a certain extent those results have 
been most satisfactory. On the one hand, living 
matter has been clearly defined ; the fact has 
been established that the only matter that lives 
is the thin viscid and transparent fluid of the cells, 
and on the other hand it has also been settled 
that between the bioplasm of the lowest and that 
of the highest organism no difference exists, and 
that bioplasm everywhere and under all circum- 
stances is identical. And thus you see what 
progress has of late been made toward the solu- 
tion of the problem of life. 

It is clear that now but one step remains, and 
that is the production of living matter. For you 
see that before the question as to the origin of 
life can be said to be answered by experimental 
science, it must not only tell us what living matter 
is and what it is not, but the process whereby 
living matter has been evolved must be demon- 
strated. Bioplasm, obtained otherwise than from 
pre-existing bioplasm, must be compounded or at 
least shown to exist, for until that is done Science 
has not solved the problem of life. Anything 
short of this is but to trace living matter to pre- 



130 LIFE, 

existing living matter for its origin, and thus to 
go from one member of an infinite series to 
another without coming any nearer to the crucial 
question as to how life came to exist in the first 
member of the series. That life comes from 
pre-existing life we know ; experience everywhere 
teaches that fact, and every experiment hitherto 
made has but served to establish the dictum that 
life has and can come alone from pre-existing life. 
Until it can be shown that certain elements united 
in a certain way, until it can be shown that when 
matter is brought into certain relations and sub- 
mitted to certain conditions, life is the result, 
then and not till then is the task achieved. But 
I need hardly tell you that this has proven the 
most difificult task of all. So far, at least, every 
attempt at the production of living matter has 
culminated in absolute failure, and from the nature 
of the case, all such attempts in the future must 
meet with the same result. Out of the secret 
chambers in which the mysteries of life are con- 
cealed there comes a voice that speaks to experi- 
mental science and says, *^ Hitherto shalt thou 
come, but no further," 

But look now at what has been the historv of 



LIFE, 131 

the attempts at the production of living matter. 
When it was found that the bioplasm of all living 
structures was identical, then the task of produc- 
ing bioplasm was attempted. The first attempt 
was made by the chemical method. It seemed 
probable that if bioplasm or living matter could 
be analyzed, and its formula once determined, 
that then by a synthetic process its elements 
could be combined, and thus living matter be 
produced. The work was begun. In more than a 
hundred laboratories something analogous to that 
wonderful substance which has power to change 
the non-living into the living, that builds up the 
wondrous structures of bone and muscle and fibre, 
was compounded. So far as the most delicate 
tests could show, this artificial substance was pre- 
cisely the same as that produced in the laboratory 
of Nature ; it seemed to be the same as the bio- 
plasm which pre-existing bioplasm produced. But 
when thus artificially produced, one thing was 
lacking — the substance did not live. Persistently 
life refused to be associated with it. It might be 
subjected to the most favorable conditions, but it 
still remained as its elements had been before, 
simply dead matter. Abortive as were the at- 



132 LIFE. 

tempts of the ancient alchemists to produce the 
philosopher's stone, so also has been every 
attempt to wed the mysterious forces of life with 
artificial protoplasm. And thus out of these 
repeated failures it has come to be recognized by 
biologists that by no process is it possible to pro- 
duce living matter. A material similar to that 
with which life has once been associated, or if 
you please, the dead matter of a once living organ- 
ism, may be compounded by the chemist. He 
can produce a substance in character and in com- 
position precisely similar to the substance which 
once lived, but a living substance no man can 
produce ; for, observe : that what a mass of proto- 
plasm is composed of when vitality has ceased to 
exist in it, is quite a different question from the 
one as to what such protoplasm was composed of 
while possessing vitality. Matter that once lived 
may be analyzed and then imitated ; but matter 
in the living state cannot be analyzed, for to ana- 
lyze it is to destroy its life and leave it no longer 
living matter. 

You see, then, the cause of the failure hitherto 
in the production of living matter, and can under- 
stand how it must be that the same cause being 



LIFE, 133 

as it shall be ever present, must ever stand in the 
way of every attempt to get at the origin of life 
by the experimental method ; for it is evident that 
if living matter cannot be analyzed then neither 
can it be compounded. 

Open here Beale's work on Bioplasm and read 
what this foremost investigator has to say on the 
subject of living matter as compared with the dead 
matter with which life has once been associated. 
These are his words: *^VVhen the life of a mass 
of bioplasm of any kind has once been cut short, 
lifeless substances having similar properties result. 
When a mass of bioplasm dies, it is resolved into 
fibrine, albumen, fatty m.atter and salts. These 
things do not exist in the matter when it is bio- 
plasm, but as the latter dies it splits up into these 
four classes of compounds.'' 

Read also his testimony in his work on " How 
to Work with the Microscope:" '^Authority 
may continue to refuse to admit, or may deem it 
expedient to deny that the living state differs 
absolutely and entirely from the non-living condi- 
tion, but the truth remains that in the living state 
of matter, whether in the living matter of the 
growing fungus, or that concerned in mental 



134 LIFE, 

action, material forces and properties are some- 
how governed and controlled, and in a manner not 
to be imitated by us, or to be explained by any- 
thing known concerning non-living matter, \yhile 
it is incontestable that the moment the matter 
ceases to live, its capacity for manifesting its ordi- 
nary properties returns/' Let me ask you not to 
overlook one very significant phrase in that state- 
ment of Dr. Beale's. It is the one in which he 
affirms that in 'living matter material forces and 
properties are somehow governed and controlled, 
and in a manner not to be imitated by us." It 
has now been well-nigh ten years since Dr. Beale 
penned those words. To materialistic thinkers — to 
those who affirmed that living matter could be 
successfully imitated, they doubtless sounded like 
an ominous prophecy. But that prophecy has not 
yet been impeached, nor from the very nature of 
the case will it ever be. Even before Beale, 
Fletcher had made statements precisely similar. 
*' It seems probable,'* says Fletcher, '^ that during 
this temporary living state the elements do not 
exist in a state of ordinary chemical combination 
at all ; these ordinary attractions or affinities seem 
to be suspended for the time. And again, **To 



LIFE. 135 

assert that living matter is 'protein' or 'albumen' 
is to assert that which never has been or can be 
proved, and all arguments based upon such asser- 
tions must be discarded." 

And thus the attempt to get the living out of 
the dead, at least by the chemical method, accord- 
ing to the testimony of the foremost biologists of 
the present must be abandoned. More than a 
quarter of a century ago it was held by the best 
thinkers that living matter was matter in a state 
utterly std ge7ieris. And the correctness of that 
judgment is now but demonstrated since men have 
been looking more profoundly into the question. 
The verdict therefore of biology as it is now given 
is this : Life is not the result or outcome of ma- 
terial elements united in any known way, but is 
the product of pre-existing life. Or as Virchow 
has since put it, Omnis cellula e cellula. That propo- 
sition, first affirmed by Schleiden, and re -affirmed 
by Remak and Virchow, stands as the fundamental 
principle upon which the science of biology to-day 
rests. 

Well now since the chemical method has so 
utterly broken down, and the impossibility of 
getting at the origin of life by that method has 



13^ LIFE. 

been demonstrated, in despair, a few of the more 
rabid materialists have turned backward and are 
now making an attempt to bring forward an old 
hypothesis. I speak of the hypothesis known by 
the title '' spontaneous generation." But in view 
of what has just been said, I think I shall not need 
to dwell long in order to show the error inherent 
in this revived hypothesis. For you can easily see 
that the facts operating against the evolution of 
life by the chemical method, must also operate 
against its evolution by the supposed processes of 
spontaneous generation. For, after all, spontane- 
ous generation is but an assigning to Nature the 
task of producing life by the same methods and 
out of the same materials which have so often 
failed in the hands of the chemist. What man 
cannot do by the use of certain laws and methods, 
this hypothesis affirms that Nature has done by 
precisely the same laws and methods. 

And yet, strange as it may seem, out of an un- 
willingness to face the conclusions which Biology 
to-day forces upon the materialistic thinkers of our 
times, this ghost of the seventeenth century is 
again brought forward into the arena of scientific 
combat, in the vain hope that it may do service in 
the present extremity. 



LIFE. 137 

Astounding, in view of what is now known con- 
cerning life, is the statement of Dr. Bastian, in his 
'' Beginnings of Life/' Here are his words : 
^* Both observation and experiment unmistakably 
testify to the fact that living matter is continually 
being formed de novo, in obedience to the same 
laws and tendencies which determine all the more 
simple chemical combinations." 

Now, instead of observation and experiment un- 
mistakably testifying to that assumption, they 
unmistakably and unqualifiedly testify to directly 
the contrary. But let me tell you here how Dr. 
Bastian came to make this assumption, in order 
that you may the better know precisely w^hat esti- 
mate you are to put upon it. Taking an infusion 
of hay or of other organic matter known to con- 
tain living germs, he put it into glass vessels 
which he then hermetically sealed so as to exclude 
all outer air. These vessels with their contents, 
were then subjected to the boiling temperature 
for several hours ; until as he supposed every germ 
had become lifeless. The contents of the vessels, 
were then examined under the microscope, and 
living bacteria were found. And so when Dr. 
Bastian found these myriad forms of life in the 



13S LIFE. 

water which he supposed had been rendered sterile, 
he reasoned that inasmuch as all former life had 
been destroyed, the life which was now present 
could be accounted for alone on the supposition 
that it was spontaneously produced. As a deduc- 
tion from these experiments he made the assertion 
to which I have called your attention. 

But now if you remember that the temperature 
at which all germs are certainly destroyed has not 
yet been fixed, and that many are capable of sus- 
taining a temperature much above that of boiling 
water, you can see how presumptuous a statement 
such as that must be. And when you also bear 
in mind the difficulty involved in effectually pre- 
venting germs from coming in contact with the 
water even after it had been rendered sterile, you 
will be prepared to accept all such statements as 
these with the largest grains of allowance, as well 
as perceive how Dr. Bastian was liable to come to 
his erroneous conclusion. His error was pointed 
out by Professor Tyndall. Repeating the experi- 
ment with the hay infusion, with greater precau- 
tions, and with far more manipulative skill. Pro- 
fessor Tyndall showed that all that Bastian had 
said was without foundation. He proved that 



LIFE. 139 

when the proper precautions were observed to 
destroy the germs in the glass vessel, not a vestige 
of life appeared in the fluid when afterward ex- 
amined. And though acknowledging his own 
regret at the results of his experiments, this is his 
conclusion, stated in his own words : *^ I affirm 
that no shred of trustworthy experimental testi- 
mony exists to prove that life in our day has ever 
appeared independently of antecedent life." Read 
also the article on Biology, written by Professor 
Huxley, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and when 
you have read it put it here over against the state- 
ment of Dr. Bastian's : '^That living matter is 
constantly being formed de novo in obedience to 
the same laws and tendencies which determine all 
the more simple chemical combinations." These 
are Professor Huxley's words : '' Not only is the 
kind of evidence adduced in favor of spontaneous 
generation logically insufficient to furnish proof of 
its occurrence, but it may be stated as a well- 
based induction, that the more careful the investi- 
gator and the more complete his mastery over the 
endless practical difficulties which surround ex- 
perimentation on this subject, the more certain 
are his experiments to give negative results, while 



HO LIFE. 

positive results are no less sure to crown the 
efforts of the clumsy and the careless." 

Such, then, is the attitude of the more careful 
and far-sighted of modern biologists toward the 
theory of spontaneous generation. As a theory 
of life it has been proven inadequate, and as a fact, 
it exists not in Nature. But it is not my purpose to 
speak lightly of experimental science. In view of 
what it has achieved no man can speak in terms 
of disrespect in regard to it without belittling and 
stultifying himself. We have done too much of 
that already. In many things it is true she has 
failed. On many of the more important and vexed 
questions that concern us she has not given us 
the light which we hoped and perhaps expected 
her to give ; but we must not expect the impos- 
sible. Neither must we forget that experimental 
science has not yet given us a theory of life that 
will stand the test. At one time it offered the 
physical theory, and said that life was the out- 
come of material elements united in certain pro 
portions and under certain conditions. To-day, 
retracting its former statement, it declares that 
theory unscientific and in no wise capable of 
solving the problem of life. 



LIFE, 141 

Again in the hypothesis of spontaneous genera- 
tion, a new theory of life was proposed. But when 
it came to testing this theory by the very experi- 
ments which should have given positive results, it 
too broke down, and to-day discarded by respect- 
able scientists everywhere, it has already been 
withdrawn. We are left therefore without a 
theory of life, at least from the scientific side. 
But while experimental science has given us no 
theory of life, its efforts at the solution of the 
problem have not been in vain. Out of these 
years of scientific investigation two principles far- 
reaching in their significance have forever been 
established. Those principles are these : — 

First, all life in the present world is to be 
traced to pre-existing life. 

Second, life is not the result of a gradual devel- 
opment or passage of the non-living into the 
living. 

It would be impossible within our prescribed 
limits to array the testimony at present given on 
the side of the first proposition. On its side 
stand men like Louis Agassiz, Virchow, Elam, 
Tyndall, Dawson, Dana, and a host of others whose 
names stand brightest in the constellation of modern 



T42 LIFE, 

scientific thinkers. In the significant words of 
Professor Huxley it may be said, *'The doctrine 
of biogenesis, or life from life, is victorious along 
the whole line at the present day.'* 

But none the less positive is the testimony on 
the side of the second proposition. Turn again to 
Lionel Beale and read his testimony on this point : 
'* There is no transition from the non-living into 
the living state, but matter passes suddenly from 
one state into the other. Neither is there in any 
case a gradation from any form of non-living 
matter.'* 

Again in his work on Protoplasm you have this 
statement : '* The ultimate particles of matter 
pass from the lifeless into the living state, and 
from the latter into the dead state suddenly. 
Matter cannot be said to half live or half die. It 
is either dead or living, animate or inanimate, and 
formed matter has ceased to live. 

Well, now you see the shape in which the 
problem relating to the origin of life to-day stands, 
and how near Science has come to its solution. 
It is true that so far at least the results have in 
the main been negative, and the origin of life has 
not yet been shown by experimental science. But 



LIFE. 143 

the investigation of the problem has also had its 
positive side. For having searched in vain the 
fields of the natural, Science to-day stands in 
devouter attitude than ever before, and in answer 
to our question, ^* Whence came life ?" points her 
finger toward the unseen. It is certain that life 
is here. As a factor of the present world, its 
presence is to be accounted for. 

Scientifically it is equally certain that there was 
a time when in this world life was not. Silently 
the globe wheeled its flight through space, when 
throughout its mighty chambers no life of spore 
or monad was present. Over the mighty empires 
of the earth now teeming with life and movement. 
Death reigned as universal king. But life now is 
here ; in rayless ocean depths, on Alpine peaks 
amid eternal snows, on every shore and beyond 
every circle, yea, even in the empty air the hum 
of Nature's industry is heard. But whence came 
life } Before you answer that question, let me 
ask you not to lose sight of those two propo- 
sitions which are to-day affirmed by the foremost 
biologists : — 

First, that all life in the present world is to be 
referred to pre-existent life. 



144 LIFE, 

Second, that life is not the result of a gradual 
development or passage of the non-living into the 
living ; and with these propositions, wrought out 
in the heat of well-nigh a century's investigation 
before your mind, answer me the question. Whence 
came life ? It was not here once. In the gaseous 
state of the infant world life could not exist. It has 
been an after product. It came in the fullness of 
time. But whence, and how } It will not help 
you to say with Sir William Thompson, that the 
germs of living matter have come to our globe 
borne on the shoulders of some meteor or frag- 
ment of some other world. That assumption but 
shifts the difficulty without solving the question. 
For how came life to these other worlds } Like 
ours, they too have once been in a gaseous state, 
and with such a state life, whether here or there, 
is incompatible. Trace life, if you please, from 
this world to another, and from that back again to 
another, and so on until you have swept the gal- 
axies, and at last you will be left standing on the 
verge of the same chasm that confronted you in 
this — the chasm that yawns between the living 
and the non-living, and that somewhere and some- 
how has been crossed. 



LIFE. 1 45 

This side of that chasm is the natural ; the 
other side is the spiritual ; this side is the seen ; 
the other side is the unseen ; this is the temporal, 
that the eternal. What if experimental science 
cannot show us how that chasm was crossed and 
life brought from the other side to this ? That it 
has been passed is certain ; that it could not have 
been passed without the intervention of a divine 
hand is the conclusion to which the more recent in- 
vestigations in biology unmistakably point. Face 
to face with that conclusion, accepting it as the 
necessary result of the most careful and accurate 
scientific investigation, stand Elam and Dawson 
and Agassiz and Carpenter and Lionel Beale. 
With him who aforetime saw the heavens opened, 
these unite in testifying that, ** In Him was life.'' 
If life in the world was not ; if life comes alone 
from pre-existing life, then does it follow that the 
life that now is has been communicated to the non- 
living by Him who hath life in Himself. That 
One who lives, and shall live forevermore. 



THE BRAIN. 

If a man die, shall he live again ? — Job. 



THE BRAIN. 

Shall it be with me as it is with the brute ? 
When the extinguisher is put down on the lamp 
here, shall my life, as its, go out in everlasting 
night ? or shall my lamp, after the extinguisher is 
down upon it here, gleam on in a richer brightness 
there ? Not if materialism is true. If there is 
nothing of me but bone and muscle and fiber and 
cell, then when these are destroyed, as they shall 
be by death, all is destroyed, and I hope in vain 
for a life beyond. But if there is something 
within me that is independent of bone and fiber 
and muscle and cell, then when these decay, as 
they shall, that something may live on. 

Until quite recently, no affirmative answer could 
scientifically be given to our question regarding 
man's immortality. But the answer that Science 
now gives is more than a qualified affirmative. 
One thing at least is certain. If the soul is inde- 
pendent of the body here, it may be hereafter. 
If the musician is not a part of the instrument, 

149 



ISO THE BRAIN. 

then the destruction of the instrument cannot be 
the destruction of the musician. And if the soul 
plays on the fibers and cells of the brain as the 
musician does on the instrument, then the soul is 
independent of these fibers and cells, just as the 
musician is independent of the instrument. And 
if the destruction of the instrument is not the 
destruction of the musician, then the destruction 
of these fibers and cells at death is not the 
destruction of the soul. 

It is apparent, therefore, that the question as to 
the separate existence of the body and the soul in 
the present state bears most intimately on the 
question of our immortality. If the soul in the 
present state maintains a separate existence, then 
is the relation which the body sustains to it not 
an essential one. The question, then, for us to 
answer is. Does the soul even in the present state 
maintain such a separate existence } Does it play 
on the fibers and cells of the brain as the musi- 
cian does on the instrument } If it does, then it 
cannot be a part of the body, and must be inde- 
pendent of it. 

In his work on '* Mind and Body," Professor 
Alexander Bain makes this significant admission : 



THE BRAIN. 151 

that there is no intrinsic improbability attaching 
to the supposition that the mind may exist alto- 
gether distinct from the body. Martensen, one 
of the most learned and careful of German writers, 
in the first volume of his '* Christian Dogmatics," 
says, *' In certain states of ecstasy and of vision, 
there appears for the moment a separation of 
the soul from the body, an existence apart from 
the body, in which the soul is not absolutely with- 
out the body and without nature, but lives in a 
manner free of the body and of nature ; and this 
may be described as a type or anticipation of its 
state after death." Archbishop Manning, cited 
with approval by Dr. Carpenter, says, "There is 
still another faculty, and more than this another 
agent, distinct from the thinking brain." 

And thus in the estimation of some of the most 
far-sighted and trustworthy thinkers, it appears at 
least probable that the soul may have an exist- 
ence independent of the body even here. But in 
regard to a question so far-reaching in its con- 
sequences, we cannot rest satisfied with mere 
probabilities. Realizing that our hold on this life 
is gradually yet certainly losing as the years rush 
on, drawing nearer and nearer to the darkness, 



15^ THE BRAIN. 

knowing that shortly we must feel the touch of 
its dampness upon the cheek, we would be certain 
if possible as to whither we are going. One thing 
we know. If the soul is independent of the body 
here it may be hereafter. If it is not — if it is 
dependent on fiber and cell — then so far as Sci- 
ence can show, we must be content to enter the 
darkness with the bandage upon our eyes. It 
shall be our purpose in the present discussion, to 
look at the physical basis on which our hopes of 
immortality are grounded, in order that we may 
see in how far those hopes are consistent with 
well-established physical facts. 

Before, however, w^e are prepared to investigate 
this subject in its scientific light, or are qualified 
to estimate the bearing which the results of mod- 
ern investigation have upon it, we must make our- 
selves acquainted with the material mechanism 
concerned in action and thought. Before the 
musician can produce harmony, he must have 
the instrument. But as an inspection of the 
instrument and a study of the arrangement and 
relation of its various parts will let us into the 
secret of how harmony may be produced when its 
keys are pressed by the fingers of the musician, 



THE BkAm. iS3 

SO will an inspection of the anatomy of the brain 
and the nervous system of man let us into the 
secret of how mental and physical action may be 
accounted for. 

With the most recent works on physiology and 
histology open before us, let us seek an answer to 
the three following questions : How are vol- 
untary and involuntary motion to be explained ? 
How is brain activity to be accounted for? How 
explain the phenomenon of memory ? 

That the fibers and cells of the brain and ner- 
vous system are the material elements concerned 
in the production of each of these phenomena, I 
shall not occupy your time in proving. How they 
do their work, how by their action and reaction 
the phenomena already named are produced, these 
are the questions that shall concern us. 

To begin, therefore, let us study for a moment 
one of these single nerve fibers. If we were to 
dissect any part of the body under the micro- 
scope, we would find it filled with silvery threads 
of various size, ranging in thickness from one- 
fifteenth-hundredth to one-twelve-thousandth of 
an inch in diameter, the medium or average thick- 
ness being about one-six-thousandth of an inch. 



154 THE BRAIN. 

These little threads are the nerve fibers. If you 
were to take the pains to examine one of them 
with a high magnifying power, and after it had 
been so prepared as to show its true character, 
you would find it to be made up of three parts : 
an outer structureless membrane ; an interior 
layer of fatty matter ; a central core or cylinder of 
albuminous matter. This central core, or ^^axis,'* 
as it is called, is the important part of the fiber, 
the two envelopes serving, so far as is known, no 
other purpose than that of a sheath for the pro- 
tection of the delicate axis, and affording a means 
of insulating one fiber from another. If now you 
were to carefully trace one of these fibers from its 
outer terminus under the skin inward, to all ap- 
pearance it would grow larger and larger as it 
approaches the nerve centres, just as the roots 
of a tree seem to grow larger as they approach 
the trunk, on account of the accumulation of 
smaller roots and rootlets. And yet if you were 
to examine more closely you would find that in- 
stead of uniting with other fibers, as it seems to 
do, each fiber remains separate from every other 
fiber and runs from its outer terminus inward, 
without uniting with any other until it reaches 



THE BRAIN. 1 55 

the brain. And thus you see that each fiber is 
able to carry any impression that it may receive 
directly to the brain. If you were standing in 
the Western Union Telegraph Ofifice in New York 
City, where there are scores of wires running out 
in every direction, and would suppose for a moment 
that each wire was put there for the single purpose 
of connecting New York directly with other points, 
you perceive that each wire would then bring its 
own distinct message. That from Chicago would 
bring one, that from Washington and Boston 
each another, and so on. Thus news could be 
sent from any part of the country directly to 
New York, because wires run from that city to 
every point. Now in something after the same 
manner, each nerve fiber carries its own sensation 
to the brain. 

Those fibers having their outer terminus in 
the eye carry to the brain impressions of sight. 
Those terminating in the ear bring to the brain 
impressions of sound. If I touch my desk with 
a finger of my right hand, a certain nerve or set 
of nerves carries the impression imj;nediately to 
the great nerve centre. If I touch it with a fin- 
ger of the left hand, another set of nerves carries 



156 THE BKAM, 

the impression inward. And so with any part of 
the body ; when any part is touched or affected in 
any way, certain nerves immediately transmit the 
impression to the brain. 

Now it is important that you should remember 
that there are two kinds of nerve fibers : the 
afferent, or those passing toward the nerve cen- 
tres, and the efferent, or those passing from the 
nerve centres. 

It is important that you should distinguish be- 
tween these, because the functions which they 
perform are vastly different. The afferent nerves 
are the nerves of sensation. All sensations are 
transmitted by means of the afferent nerves. If 
they were destroyed, all impressions would also 
cease to be given. You could then see nothing, 
hear nothing, feel nothing, in short could have no 
knowledge whatever of the external world ; for it 
is on these afferent nerves, carrying as they do 
impressions from without inward, that our knowl- 
edge of the external world depends. But the 
efferent nerves proceed from within outward, and 
as we have already learned, perform a very differ- 
ent function. These are the nerves of motion. 
When I move my arm, or walk across the room, 



THE BRAIN. IS 7 

or engage in any form of bodily activity, the 
motion is produced by these efferent nerves, and 
without them I would be capable of no activity 
whatever. 

Well, now, let us examine the outer extremity 
of one of these afferent nerves, which we said 
was the nerve of sensation. Near its outer ter- 
mination and immediately beneath the point at 
which the impression is given, the axis, or that 
part of the fiber which we said a moment ago 
was the essential part of the fiber, escapes from 
its sheath and divides itself into the minut- 
est threads, forming a most complex network. 
These threads are so great in number, and so 
completely penetrate every portion near the sur- 
face of the body, that no part, however small, 
is untraversed by them. It is impossible to punc- 
ture the skin even with the finest needle with- 
out touching the expanded axis of some nerve 
fiber. 

Let us now trace one of these fibers — say one 
from the finger here, inward. You will find it 
soon apparently uniting with other fibers as it 
approaches the nerve centre here in the spinal 
cord. Entering the spinal cord it touches a cell. 



IS8 THE BRAIN. 

We shall speak of these cells further on. This 
much, however, ought at this place to be said, — 
the moment the nervous force set into operation 
by a sensation touches the cell, it is magnified or 
intensified, and is thus able to perform the work 
of stimulating more properly the efferent nerve 
with which it here comes in contact. Now the 
nerve that we have been tracing is, as we said, a 
nerve of sensation. It carries the sensation to 
the cell here. But notice here something else. 
From this same cell there runs an efferent nerve 
back to the muscles. This efferent nerve, you 
will remember, is the nerve that produces motion. 
You see that we have here now three things : 
the nerve carrying the sensation to the cell ; the 
nerve of motion running from the cell to the 
muscles, and the cell itself. 

Let us now see, if we can, how motion is pro- 
duced by the action of this threefold mechanism. 
Let us say now, that inadvertently I touch my 
finger to the sharp point of a needle or to some 
heated surface. By that action a stimulus is 
given to the afferent nerve running to the cell. 
Here the stimulus, intensified by the cell, now 
stimulates in its turn the nerve running to the 



THE BRAIN. 159 

muscles, causing them to contract* and as a result 
my hand is withdrawn. This is called automatic 
action, for you perceive that in the act of with- 
drawing my hand my will is not called into oper- 
ation ; that act is performed indeed before I am 
aware of it, and hence is called automatic motion, 
because it is motion independent of the will, and 
is to be explained by the spontaneous action and 
reaction of the nerves and the cells. And now at 
this point I am anxious that you should not over- 
look one thing, and that is the real manner in 
which this automatic motion is produced. What 
causes the automatic motion of my arm when 
inadvertently I touch my finger to a heated sur- 
face } You say it is caused by the contraction of 
the proper muscles. And when I ask what caused 
the muscular contraction, you say it was produced 
by some nervous force operating along the nerves 
that traverse the muscles, and thus the movement 
of the arm is caused by muscular contraction. 
This muscular contraction is caused by the ner- 
vous force operating along the nerve. And when 
I ask you what caused the nerve thus to act, you 
say it was caused by some stimulus. Now that 
is what I want you to remember. It was the 



i6o THE BRAIN. 

stimulus given to the efferent nerve that in some 
manner caused it to act ; its action caused the 
contraction of the muscle, and this contraction 
produced the movement. The important thing, 
then, you see, is the stimulus ; for when you have 
that you have all the rest. Well, now, if you bear 
in mind that the original cause of motion is this 
stimulus given to the efferent nerve, we are pre- 
pared to understand how voluntary action, as well 
as involuntary, is produced. For there is mus- 
cular motion that is not automatic. I can move 
my arm in any direction without the movement 
being caused by some sensation or stimulus given 
from without. I can move it by an act of will 
See now how this becomes possible. Here is the 
motor nerve ; and we have just learned that in 
order that motion in my arm be produced, this 
nerve must be caused to act, in other words must 
be stimulated. Suppose now, that instead of its 
being stimulated by means of some sensation 
brought from without through the afferent nerve, 
it should be stimulated from within along the 
track of some nerve running down here from the 
brain, motion again would result ; for the thing 
necessary is simply to stimulate the nerve of 



THE BRAIN. i6i 

motion and the movement is produced. That 
nerve may be stimulated, as I have shown you, by 
a sensation from without, but it may also be stim- 
ulated through the nerves running down the spinal 
cord, and in either case you have motion. And 
thus you can see how it is possible for the will 
to operate upon the body. Affording as it does 
in some way a stimulus to the proper efferent 
nerves, it is possible for us to direct the motions 
of the body and to accomplish all of those move- 
ments which we call voluntary movements. Now 
it is not a part of our task at present, to define 
the nature of the stimulus by virtue of which vol- 
untary motion is produced. It is sufficient for 
the present to show that such a stimulus is cer- 
tainly given ; and to call attention to the fact that 
without such a stimulus we could not possibly 
be capable of voluntary movement. Nor does the 
question specially concern us as to how it comes 
that so small a stimulus is able to produce a force 
so out of proportion to itself. For when my arm 
is moved suddenly, the force of movement is cer- 
tainly many thousand times greater than the force 
of stimulation could possibly be ; and yet it we 
remember that in the muscles themselves there 



1 62 THE BRAIN. 

resides a vast amount of potential energy, and 
suppose that the effect of the stimulus is simply 
to liberate that energy, we can account for the 
vast disproportion between the energy given off 
as the result of a certain stimulus, and the intrin- 
sic energy of the stimulus itself. 

An illustration of this may be found in the 
steam-engine. As it stands there at the station 
ready for its journey, within its boiler there resides 
a vast amount of potential energy — an energy 
which if called out is able to move the train of a 
score of cars, each loaded with many thousand 
pounds of freight. But when the throttle is 
opened and motion is communicated to the ma- 
chinery, the force that is now put into operation 
is vastly out of proportion to the force exercised 
by the engineer in opening the throttle ; but as 
the opening of the throttle simply served to liber- 
ate the energy resident in the boiler, so does the 
stimulus given to the motor nerves serve but to 
release the energy resident in the muscles. The 
fact that such a stimulus is given, whether it 
comes from without, as in the case of automatic 
motion, or from within, as in the case of volun- 
tary, this is the fact that we are now to bear in 



THE BRAIN. 1 63 

mind, as well as the other, namely ; that the very 
small initial force required for the change is just 
as impossible to conceive without adequate cause 
as the whole force itself would be. 

We come now to the cell. 

Insignificant as the cell apparently is, we must 
not overlook it, for it performs several very impor- 
tant functions. 

Two purposes are served by the cell. First, 
they unite the nerves at their inner termination. 
Secondly, they serve the purpose of magnifying 
the impressions given by the nerves. Suppose 
that I should touch very lightly a piece of velvet,' 
or the down of a feather, the impression would be 
very slight ; I could not feel it, perhaps, if the 
sensation were not magnified or intensified in 
some way. Now this function is performed by 
the cell. It magnifies the faint impressions, 
whether made upon the nerves of sensation, or 
on the nerves running down from the brain to 
the motor nerves, and thus makes it possible for 
even the smallest stimulus to accomplish its work. 
Like the nerves, these cells are made up of three 
parts. The outside consists of a pulpy matter. 
Inside of this is a roundish body called the nu- 



164 THE BRAIN. 

cleus ; and still inside of this are often to be 
found one or more bodies called nuclei. 

These cells range from one-three -hundredth 
to one-three-thousandth of an inch in diameter. 
Every nerve terminates in one of these cells. 
Now in tracing the nerve some time ago, we 
traced it only to the cell here in the spinal cord ; 
but it did not terminate there. Crossing the cell 
it passed upward along the spinal cord to the sen- 
sorium. This is called the sensorium because all 
sense impressions are recorded there. There 
would be no sensation or feeling of any kind if 
the nerves did not reach this portion of the brain. 
For instance, if the spina] cord was severed here 
in the region of the cervical vertebra, there would 
be no sensation in any of the parts below that 
point. You might produce automatic motion in 
the parts below the point of lesion if you were 
to stimulate the proper nerves, just as you had 
before, but you could not have feeling. The sen- 
sorium is the seat of feeling. It is in it that the 
nerves from the ear, the eye, the mouth and the 
body all terminate. Had I a slate here and five 
of you were to write your different experiences 
upon it, the slate would serve the same purpose 



THE BRAIN. 165 

for you that the sensorium does for the five 
senses. The sensorium is the slate upon which 
the nerves write their various impressions. Here 
the optic, the olfactory, the auditory and all the 
in-coming nerves record their impressions. But 
now suppose that after five of you had recorded 
your experiences on this slate, I should take it up 
in my hand, read over what you had written and 
meditate on all the facts recorded. Suppose that 
I should arrange these facts into some system ; 
notice the bearing of each on the other, and draw 
conclusions out of them, then I would perform 
the same labor that is performed by the cerebrum. 
Looking down, if I may so speak, on the record 
as made by the senses on the sensorium, just as I 
would look at the writing on the slate, the cere- 
brum takes up these facts one by one, and shapes 
them into ideas. The cerebrum, then, is the seat 
of thought and ideas, just as the sensorium is the 
seat of feeling. But while the cerebrum is the 
seat of thought, it is evident that for the facts 
upon which it thinks, it is dependent largely upon 
the impressions given in the sensorium. And 
yet the cerebrum deduces facts and evolves ideas 
the basis of which were not given in the senso- 



1 66 THE BRAIN, 

rium. We have thoughts, conceptions and ideas, 
the bases of which could not possibly have been 
furnished by the five senses. Let us see. Con- 
ceive for a moment that you knew absolutely 
nothing concerning the world that lies about you 
— you are blind and deaf, cannot taste, smell or 
feel. Conceive yourself as completely shut off 
from the external world as is Laura Bridgman, 
of whom you have doubtless read. Suppose now 
that by some means or other it were possible for 
five persons to inform you of all that could be 
seen and heard and tasted and felt in this match- 
less world of ours. One would tell you of all 
that could be seen — what a field of thought would 
be opened for your meditation, and how many 
ideas would come that you had never had before ! 
Another would tell you of all that could be heard 
through the ear, of sound and melody and human 
speech, and so on until you had some conception 
of the entire range of human sensuous knowledge. 
What a field would be opened up to you ! Now 
just the knowledge that you would receive were 
your friends to tell you of all that could be heard 
and tasted and seen and felt, is in reality brought 
to you by the five senses. Yet all this is empiri- 



THE BRAIN. 167 

cal knowledge ; and as in swift thought you this 
moment sweep the entire field of this empiric 
knowledge, you cannot but realize that it is but a 
part of what you really know. You have knowl- 
edge the basis of which even your five senses 
never brought to you, and no man can persuade 
you that your knowledge is circumscribed by the 
narrow limits of mere sense impressions. Whence 
comes your consciousness of freedom } Is there 
freedom in nature, and did you learn there that 
you w^ere free } Whence comes your conscious- 
ness of responsibility 1 Did you learn that from 
nature.^ Is nature responsible, and if so, to whom? 
Whence comes your knowledge of spirit, of the 
unseen, and of God } This knowledge comes not 
through the senses. You never gained it through 
the eye or the ear, or through any other sense 
faculty. What, then, is the organ of this higher 
knowledge 1 It is almost universally conceded by 
writers on mental physiology, that the cerebrum 
is the seat of these higher, and indeed of all ideas. 
Let me ask your attention now for a moment to 
an examination of the cerebrum, the seat of intel- 
ligence, and to a study of that organ by virtue of 
whose operation all thought is at all possible. 



1 68 THE DRAII^, 

Immediately within the skull, from which it is 
separated by several thin membranes, lies that 
portion of the brain known as the cerebrum. It 
is terminated below by the cerebellum, and covers 
the sensorium, with which it is united by numer- 
ous nerve fibers. It is composed of two sub- 
stances — the white and the gray. The white 
substance makes up by far the greater portion of 
the brain. If you were to examine this white 
substance under the microscope, you would find it 
made up of nerve fibers similar to those of which 
we spoke a moment ago. Above this white sub- 
stance, lining it on the exterior, lies what is called 
the gray substance of the brain. This gray mat- 
ter is a mixture of white fibers with cells. These 
cells imbedded in the white fibers, give to this 
substance its gray appearance. 

In your study of any plate of the brain, you will 
notice that this gray matter is folded and furrowed ; 
just as the glove which we wear follows the outline 
of the closed hand, running up here and down 
there between the fingers, so this gray substance 
covers and follows the white in all of its convolu- 
tions. It is easy to see that this folding of the 
gray substance gives it a greater extent of surface 



THE BRAIN-. 169 

than would be afforded did it simply conform with 
the interior of the skull. This cake of gray mat- 
ter, running down here and there, folded as we 
have said, contains about three hundred square 
inches of surface. Its average thickness is one 
tenth of an inch, and it is nearly a compact mass 
of cells. It has been estimated that in the gray 
substance of a brain of average size, there would 
be two hundred millions of these cells. As every 
cell has at least two fibers attached to it, and often 
many more, we are safe in estimating the number 
of fibers in the brain at forty-eight hundred million. 
Now I said a short time ago, that the gray matter, 
or external substance of the brain, was composed 
almost entirely of cells. But over this cake of 
gray matter, following it in all its foldings, lies a 
thin network called the pia mater. This network 
is made up almost entirely of blood vessels, by 
means of which blood is carried to the fibers and 
cells. This network of blood vessels covers the 
brain so completely that every part of it is abun- 
dantly supplied with blood. 

Well, now, you have before you the material 
organ concerned in mental activity. You have 
here the white substance, composed of fibers, the 



170 THE BKAIN. 

cake of gray matter with its fibers and cells, and 
finally this thin membrane that carries the blood 
to every portion of the brain. Let us see now, if 
we can, how mental operations are carried on by 
the mutual working of these three things. All 
those who have studied philosophy are aware that 
galvanic electricity is produced from three sub- 
stances — zinc, copper, and acid. When a piece 
of zinc is united with a piece of copper, and both 
immersed in acid, you have galvanic electricity as 
the result. Now if you do not carry that illustra- 
tion too far, you will find in it an analogy that will 
help you to understand, in some measure, the 
probable working of these various parts of the 
brain in the processes of thought. Let the zinc 
represent the white fibers, the copper the cells, 
the acid the blood, and you will have what might 
be called a mental battery, which under the control 
of an intelligence back of it is capable of evolving 
thought, as the galvanic battery is capable of 
evolving electricity. 

But you ask. Is there any proof for all this ? 
Is there any proof that the fibers and cells of the 
brain have anything to do in the production of 
thought, or that even a remote analogy exists 



THE BRAIN. 171 

between the production of electricity and the pro- 
duction of thought ? I answer : Yes ; with this 
qualification. Back of the galvanic battery there 
stands no intelligence ; back of the mental battery 
there does. And yet, that the character of the 
thought produced depends in some measure on 
the condition of the organ, is beyond question. 
I suppose that you are well aware that what we 
call clearness and dullness of thought, depends 
largely on the condition of the blood. Let the 
arteries send vitiated blood to the brain, and 
mental activity will be impaired. Take an illustra- 
tion. You are shut up in an illy ventilated and 
crowded room, the air of which has become thor- 
oughly vitiated. In a very short time you lose 
the power to think clearly, a dullness comes over 
you, and your mind refuses to act as it does at 
other times. Go out and inhale for an hour or 
two the pure air ; you now find that your dullness 
has left you, and that you can think as clearly as 
usual. 

Now why did you lose the power of clear and 
sustained thought in the first case 1 The answer 
is, because of the vitiated state of the blood, re- 
sulting from the breathing of impure air. When 



172 THE BRAIN. 

you went out, and the blood was rendered com- 
paratively pure again, you could think again 
clearly. The blood that flows to the fibers and 
cells must be pure, or thought cannot be clear, 
incisive and sustained. Come back to our gal- 
vanic battery, and you will see the analogy between 
the production of thought and the production of 
electricity. Weaken the acid in the battery, so 
that it cannot act as it should on the zinc and 
copper plates, and the electricity produced is but 
small in quantity. Strengthen the acid so that it 
can act properly on the plates, and the electric 
current becomes strong. Vitiate the blood that 
acts on the cells and fibers, and that makes it pos- 
sible for them to perform their functions, and you 
weaken the powers of thought. Reverse the pro- 
cess and the effect is also reversed. 

We have now, I think, learned something of the 
probable manner in which thought is carried on in 
the cerebrum by the concurrent action of the 
fibers, the cells, and the blood, and are able at the 
same time to see upon what grounds the brain has 
been called the organ of the mind. 

We now come to a very important fact, and I 
want to call your attention particularly to it be- 



THE BRAIN, 173 

cause of the intimate bearing that it has upon the 
subject under discussion. I speak of *' The locali- 
zation of the cerebral functions." By this it is 
meant that in any certain mental operation, not 
all of the brain is brought into use, but only a cer- 
tain portion of it. Only, if you please, that specific 
group of fibers and cells which in the brain is 
devoted to that specific purpose. That as each 
key in the instrument is used in the production of 
a certain tone, and is used alone when that special 
tone is required, so with the various groups of 
fibers and cells in the brain. In each group a 
certain function is located. That group of fibers 
and cells, for instance, which is brought into oper- 
ation in the study of music, is a different group 
from the one used in the study of astronomy. 
The one brought into operation in acquiring a 
knowledge of mathematics, is a different group 
from the one used in the study of language, and 
so on. For every function of which man is capa- 
ble, there is also somewhere in the brain a group 
of fibers and cells answering to it. 

Suppose for a moment that one should set him- 
self to the task of acquiring a knowledge of the 
Greek language. A group of cells and fibers, 



174 THE BRAIN. 

many thousand in number, are brought into use. 
These constitute the receptacle of that special 
knowledge. And as he would go on to increase 
his knowledge of the Greek, the combination would 
increase in its number by the addition of still other 
fibers and cells that had been brought into use, 
something after this manner : When the meaning 
of a Greek verb would be learned, certain cells 
with their fibers would be charged with it. When 
the meaning of a noun would be learned, other 
cells with their fibers would become the receptacle, 
and so on. But if such an one were to study music, 
an entirely different set of fibers and cells would 
be brought into operation. And thus when any 
new acquirement is attained, some special group 
is called into requisition, and henceforth becomes 
the receptacle of that special knowledge. Just as 
each key in the piano is employed in the produc- 
tion of a certain tone, so each group in the brain 
is employed in its own specific kind of knowledge. 
Perhaps that statement should be qualified some- 
what. If each branch of our knowledge were 
entirely distinct from every other branch, that 
statement would be true. But such is not the 
case ; and, inasmuch as no class of facts can be 



THE BRAIN. 175 

said to stand distinct from another class, we may 
perhaps say that in cases where two thoughts arc 
similar, the same group with some modification of 
its arrangement or combination is used in the 
contemplation of both. As the musician in the 
production of a certain chord will sometimes use 
keys brought into use in the production of other 
chords, so may certain cells and fibers of one group 
be used in connection with the fibers and cells of 
another group, and yet each group so far as itself 
and the specific work which it does, are con- 
cerned, stands distinct from every other. But see 
now the proofs upon which this doctrine of the 
localization of functions depends. It is based on 
three facts : — 

The first is the fact established by Broca. He 
showed that lesion in the posterior part of the 
third frontal convolution of the left hemisphere 
resulted in aphasia. 

It was in 1861 that Broca established that fact 
and proved that the faculty of articulate speech 
was located in this portion of the brain, and that a 
diseased condition of this part resulted in aphasia, 
or loss of speech. 

Secondly, on the results of experiments per- 



176 THE BRAIN, 

formed by Dr. Ferrier on the cortical substance of 
the cerebrum and other ganglionic centers of the 
brain. It was found by Ferrier that when an 
electrode of a battery was applied to certain parts 
of the brain, movements precisely similar to those 
of the living state could be produced. Expres- 
sions of emotion, of pain, the perfectly natural 
movement of any part, were all produced when 
the proper point in the hemisphere was touched ; 
thus showing that each function has its locality. 

Thirdly, it is a fact attested by the experience 
of every student, that when the mind having be- 
come wearied by intense application to any specific 
subject turns to another, a sense of relaxation is 
experienced. This could not be the case were the 
same groups used in the contemplation of both, 
and can only be explained on the supposition that 
in the investigation of one subject a certain group 
is brought into requisition, and that when the 
mind turns to another, the exhausted group ceases 
to be used and a fresh group is employed. 

From these facts we are warranted in saying 
that, '' There is no departure from fact or strong 
probability in assigning special and distinct tracks 
for the currents connected with each separate 
sensation, idea, emotion, or other conscious state." 



THE BRAIN. 1 77 

But observe now that when such a nervous 
track has once been estabhshed, by the bringing 
into operation of a certain group of fibers and 
cells, then ever afterward the reproduction of the 
same idea, thought, or emotion, results when the 
same group is again brought into action. Thus 
we have what we call memory. In every act of 
memory the same group of fibers and cells, which 
in the first instance was employed in the thought, 
or conscious state, is but again brought into 
operation. 

Suppose that, to-day, you for the first time be- 
come acquainted with a certain fact of history. 
You learn, for instance, that on the first, second 
and third days of July, 1863, the Battle of Gettys- 
burg was fought, with Gen. Mead in command of 
the Federal, and Gen. Lee in command of the 
Confederate forces. You learn further that the 
losses on either side were a certain number in 
killed, wounded and missing. Now in the acquire- 
ment of that information certain fibers and cells 
were brought into use, and a certain nervous track 
established. If now, after long years, you wish to 
recall these facts, how do you do it } I reply : 
By bringing those same cells and fibers into action 



ijS THE BRAIN, 

which were employed when the information was 
being acquired. The moment they again act, 
there is brought before the mind the facts which 
you wish to recall and of which they were made, 
as it were, the especial receptacle. Strike a key 
of the piano. It gives out a certain sound. When 
the piano was made by the mechanic, the wire 
corresponding to that key was constructed so as 
to give out that sound and no other, and thus 
whenever you strike it, it gives out precisely the 
same tone. Stimulate a group of fibers and cells 
that has once been employed, and it gives out the 
thought or experience with which it was originally 
charged. Stimulate it again, and it gives out the 
same thought or impression. Stimulate it again, 
after long years have intervened, and it gives out 
the same thought still. That is memory. For 
every new acquirement, then, I bring into use a 
new combination of fibers and cells ; and in each 
act of memory I only cause them to act again, and 
thus I have brought before me once more the fact, 
a knowledge of which was once gained and which 
I now wish to recall. The action of these fibers 
and cells reproduces it, just as the wire in the 
instrument always reproduces the same tone. I 



THE BRAIN. 179 

remarked at the commencement of this discussion, 
that as an examination into the structure of the 
piano, an inspection of its wires and keys, their 
action and relation, would help us to understand 
how music is produced when the keys are touched 
by the musician, so also would an examination of 
the brain with its intricate mechanism, let us into 
the secret of how action and thought might result 
when its groups of fibers and cells are brought 
into action. For the brain also is an instrument 
upon which something plays, as the musician does 
on the instrument. I think, therefore, that we 
are not going too far when we say that an expla- 
nation, adequate at least in some degree, has been 
made of the instrument concerned in the produc- 
tion of action and thought. We have seen how 
that either may result when the appropriate fibers 
and cells are brought into operation, and have 
learned how that in their reaction, memory finds 
its explanation. Thus we have examined the 
instrument ; we have seen how both physical and 
mental action are brought about when these deli- 
cate groups are brought into play. 

But mark : The great problem still remains un- 
solved, for it is one thing to explain the instru- 



i8o THE BRAIN. 

ment, it is quite another to point out the musician 
whose existence is as much a necessity for the 
production of melody as is the instrument. We 
have seen what the result would be if certain keys 
of the cerebral key-board were touched ; but we 
have not yet accounted for the melody, inasmuch 
as we have as yet failed to explain the manner in 
which these cerebral keys are touched in the pro- 
duction of action and thought and memory. 

It is clear that if certain nerves are stimulated, 
voluntary and involuntary action will follow. It 
is clear that if certain groups of fibers and cells 
are stimulated, thought follows. It is equally 
clear that if groups having once been brought 
into action in the attainment of any acquirement 
are again made to act, the result of that action is 
memory. But how now are these fibers and cells 
stimulated, and what is it that stimulates them } 
These, let me ask you to bear in mind, are the 
supreme questions. In getting an answer let me 
ask you to come back once more to our illustra- 
tion in the instrument. There are two ways in 
which sound is produced from the instrument : 

The first is by some foreign substance acting on 
and depressing the keys. A weight or a book may 



THE BRAIJV. i8i 

fall upon the key and a tone be produced as the 
result. 

The second way in which sound may be pro- 
duced from the piano is by the depression of 
the key by the finger of the musician. Just so 
with this complicated instrument out of which 
action and thought come. Its keys also may be 
caused to act in two ways : first, they may be 
stimulated by some external impression. I may 
feel something, I may hear something, I may see 
something, and by this the fibers and cells may be 
stimulated and thus caused to do their work, yet 
all that is but the foreign substance that presses 
the key of the piano. It is possible for me to 
shut my eyes, to close every avenue through which 
any sense impression can come, and by the action, 
not of that which is without, but of something 
solely from within, stimulate these nerves and 
fibers out of which thought and action come. 
Aye, it is in such moments as these, when with 
the external world shut entirely out and every 
avenue along which external impressions can 
come effectually closed, that the loftiest and the 
sublimest thoughts come as it were like an inspi- 
ration. Granted that the cerebral keys are stimu- 



1 82 THE BRAIN. 

lated by external impressions, then I ask, What 
stimulated them when no external impression was 
present ? For, mark you, these keys must be 
stimulated, and without a stimulus neither physi- 
cal nor mental action can result. 

You may have tone by permitting the foreign 
substance to fall upon the key of the piano, but 
you cannot have melody. ' For the soul-stirring 
melodies of a Mozart or Beethoven the keys must 
be swept by the fingers of an intelligent musician. 
So, likewise, you may have action, physical and 
mental, as the result of external impressions 
affecting the keys of fiber and cell. For, observe 
that anything that causes them to act, also causes 
them to perform their special functions. But 
consecutive, intelligent, profound thought, you 
can have alone as the keys in the brain are 
touched by an intelligent musician. You per- 
ceive that we are now brought face to face with 
our former question, namely. Is there something 
that plays on the fibers and cells of the brain as 
the musician does on the instrument ? You will 
all agree with me when I affirm that it is possible 
for us to direct our thoughts, but do not overlook 
the fact that that admission is of immense conse- 
quence here. 



THE BRAIN. 183 

You say that a man is responsible for his 
thoughts, and all the world agrees with you in the 
assertion. We can think of what we choose. By 
the operation of our wills we can concentrate our 
recollection upon a certain event and search 
out its details, along with all its collateral circum- 
stances, to the exclusion of everything else. But 
if we can think of what we choose, then it also 
follows that we can bring into operation any group 
of fibers and cells according as we wish. For illus- 
tration : if I wish to think of some fact connected 
with the Greek language, I must use a certain 
group of fibers and cells. If I turn my attention 
to music, I bring that particular group into oper- 
ation which is the storehouse of my knowledge of 
music ; and so on. The fact, then, that we can 
think of what we choose, proves that we have 
power to set any group into action ; for without 
their action we cannot think. And now I ask 
again the question. Is there something within that 
plays on the fibers and cells as the musician does 
on the instrument } It is self-evident that the 
key on the instrument yonder cannot depress 
itself. There is something to depress it, or there 
can be no sound. But if the key of the instru- 



184 THE BR Am, 

ment cannot depress itself, but needs the finger of 
the musician to produce from it its tone, so neither 
can the keys of fiber and cell depress themselves. 
They also need the finger of the intelligent musi- 
cian. What you may call this invisible musician 
is a matter of small consequence. You may call it 
the soul, you may call it the ego ; but that such an 
agent is present is beyond question. For if melody 
proves the presence of a musician to touch the 
keys that are in harmony, then thought proves the 
presence of a musician to touch the cerebral keys 
that also are in harmony. And if melody proves 
that the keys of the piano are touched, so does 
thought prove that there is something that plays 
on the brain as the musician does on the instru- 
ment. There is then something that depresses 
the fiber and cell keys of the brain. 

But what now is this something } My friends, 
to speak of this agent that stimulates the cerebral 
groups as a material something, a force analogous 
to electricity, is nothing short of downright fool- 
ishness. To assume that position is to betray 
a lamentable ignorance of two facts, either of 
which is fatal to such a hypothesis. 

First, The nerves are without insulation. For 



THE BRAIN. 185 

this reason they afford no conduction for the elec- 
tric currents, and experiment has proved that 
electricity applied to them, instead of following 
along their course, distributes itself throughout 
the body. 

Secondly, This stimulus acts as no mode, or 
form, or mood of physical force acts. From these 
facts it follows that that something by which the 
stimulus is given, cannot be a material something. 

But we may go one step further, and affirm that 
that something is intelligent. As the musician 
selects those keys which are in harmony, so does 
this something use one group in preference to 
another in volitional thought. This something 
therefore exercises choice. I ask now the meta- 
physician, What is the highest attribute of an 
intelligent being } He answers, Choice ; the 
power to choose one thing in preference to an- 
other, the ability to weigh and decide in favor of 
one thing over against another. But if choice is 
an attribute of intelligence, then is this invisible 
something, this unseen musician, intelligent. We 
have then two facts which are scientifically certain : 

First, There is something that plays on the 
fibers and cells of the brain, as the musician does 
on the instrument. 



1 86 THE BNAIAT. 

Secondly, That something which corresponds to 
the musician is intelligent. 

But if there is an invisible, intelligent something 
that plays on the fibers and cells of the brain, as 
the musician does on the instrument, then that 
something must be independent of these fibers 
and cells, as the musician is independent of the 
instrument. 

Standing, then, upon those two propositions, 
first, that there is something that plays on the 
fibers and cells of the brain as the musician does 
on the instrument, second, that that something 
is intelligent, I can look through the clouds 
which are soon to encircle me and catch a glimpse 
of the beyond. 

What though I shall drop my body as I enter the 
shadow } I shall drop it as the butterfly drops 
the chrysalis. If the soul plays on the fibers and 
cells of the brain as the musician does on the 
instrument, then it must be independent of them 
as the musician is independent of the instrument. 
And if the destruction of the instrument cannot 
be the destruction of the musician, because he is 
independent of the instrument, then the destruc- 



THE BRAIN. 187 

tion of the body is not the destruction of the soul, 
because it is independent of the body. 

" The world recedes I it disappears ! 

Heaven opens to my eyes ! — my ears 

With sounds seraphic ring : 

Lend, lend your wings ! I mount ! I fly ! 

O, grave ! where is thy victory ? 

O, death 1 where is thy sting ? '* 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

What if the earth 
Be but the shadow of heaven and things therein 
Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought ? 

— Milton. 
There is a spiritual body. — Paul. 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

Science and revelation alike testify that the 
present visible universe with all that belongs to it 
shall at length be dissolved. There will come 
a time when the sun shall have burned itself out ; 
when the moon, having grown old, shall fail to 
make her nightly journey through the sky ; when 
the stars, one after another, shall grow dim and 
then go out forever ; and when the earth with its 
mountains and its seas and all that belongs to it 
shall cease to be. The time will come when — 

" The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all that it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And, like this unsubstantial pageant, faded, 
Leave not a rack behind." 

It is in such a world that man finds himself, 
with nothing around him that is permanent, with 
everything hastening to its dissolution. And yet 
face to face with a dissolving universe, man has 

191 



192 THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 

always stood firm in the conviction that he is an 
exception to the universal order. Amid the perish- 
ing, he has ever clung to the thought that he at 
least is immortal. 

Near four thousand years ago, sitting in his tent 
door, conversing with his three friends, Job spoke 
his belief in his immortality : '* Though after my 
skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I 
shall see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and 
my eyes shall behold and not another." 

Those who have moulded the thinking of every 
nation, both ancient and modern, have taught 
that man is immortal. Homer sang it into the 
hearts of the Greeks, and Socrates put it into 
their philosophy. Confucius taught it to the 
Chinese, and Zoroaster to the Persians. In the 
religious books of India we find this prayer ad- 
dressed to the great Soma : 

'^ Where there is eternal light, in the world 
where the sun is placed, in that imperishable, 
immortal world, place me, O, Soma ! 

*' Where life is free, in the third heaven of 
heavens, where the worlds are radiant, there make 
me immortal. Where wishes and desires are, 
where the bowl of the bright Soma is, where there 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 193 

is food and rejoicing, there make me immortal. 
Where there is happiness and delight, where joy 
and pleasure reside, where the desires of our 
desire are attained, there make me immortal." 

The Indian in the early wilds of America had 
also his rude ideas of a world beyond. Far off to 
the west, where he saw the sun set, beyond a 
dreadful deep and rapid stream over which from 
hill to hill there lay a narrow, slippery passage, 
there were the delightful hunting grounds. In 
the frozen zone the Greenlander talks of a land 
where perpetual summer reigns, where all is sun- 
shine, and there is no night ; where good water 
and birds and fish and reindeer are, without end. 
The way to this delightful place is down a fright- 
ful precipice, all stained with the blood of those 
who have gone down before ; and if, perchance, 
this precipice is descended in winter or in tempest, 
and the soul do but slip, it perishes utterly. 

And thus in all ages and among all nations man 
has believed in his own immortality ; and though 
he has seen the perishable nature of everything 
around him, he has ever experienced an inner 
certainty that to the universal order he at least is 
an exception. 



194 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

Nor has man come into the possession of this 
belief through tradition. Wherever and whenever 
he has sat in confidential communion with his own 
soul he has heard it speak to him of his immor- 
tality. But simple and cheering as this conviction 
is when possessed in its native purity, as a result 
of certain phases of modern speculation and so- 
called scientific thinking, it has come to lose much 
of its significance. 

To the mind unbiased by false systems of 
thinking, a future life has always meant a con- 
tinued existence of the self-conscious individual. 
It has demanded that as in this life man is in the 
possession of a self-conscious and an individual 
existence, so must he be in the future. Disrobed 
of all that hinders and limits him here, like the 
butterfly that shakes off its chrysalis and then 
rises into a higher and freer state, so man, freed 
from the limitations arising out of his association 
with his present tenement, shall come into a freer 
and higher existence, yet retaining his personal 
identity. It is needless to say that a conception 
such as this is alone able to satisfy our ideas of 
a real immortality, and, answering as it does every 
hope and longing, it alone is comprehensive. 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 19S 

And yet, in the discussion of the subject before 
us, it will be necessary to take a hasty glance at 
two other conceptions that now set themselves as 
rivals to this in modern thinking. 

The first is the one offered from the side of the 
materialist. Man's immortality, according to this 
conception, finds its basis in the conservation of 
matter. Long ago it was discovered that matter 
is imperishable, and the law of the conservation of 
matter established as a fact of science. When 
a mass of matter was changed from one state into 
another, as is done when a piece of mineral is 
changed from the solid into the gaseous form, it 
was found by the use of the balance, that no 
particle of it was lost. The weight of the gas 
was precisely equal to the weight of the mineral 
out of which it had been evolved ; and although its 
form was changed, yet no particle was destroyed. 
Numerous experiments with matter in its various 
states have confirmed the fact that by no process 
at the command of man can matter be altered in 
quantity, or annihilated. By heat and pressure it 
may be changed from -one state into another; 
a solid may be changed into a liquid, a liquid 
into a gas ; the process may be reversed, and yet 



196 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

the amount of matter abides the same precisely in 
quantity. 

You have heard of the experiment performed by 
Faraday. One day a workman in his laboratory 
accidentally dropped a little silver cup into a jar 
containing acid. In a short time it disappeared. 
Among the inexperienced chemists then working 
under the direction of the great scientist, the 
question was discussed whether the cup could ever 
be restored. One said it could not ; that being 
now dissolved and rendered imperceptible it was 
destroyed. In the midst of the discussion, Fara- 
day entered the room, and learning what had hap- 
pened, he put certain chemicals into the jar, and in 
a few moments every particle of the silver was 
precipitated. He lifted it out a shapeless mass, 
sent the precipitate to a silversmith, and the cup 
was restored. And thus by various processes 
known to the chemist, the form or state of matter 
may be changed. A silver cup may be dissolved, 
held in solution, become invisible, but in no case 
can matter be destroyed. Well, now, when this 
law of the imperishability of matter was discov- 
ered, materialists at once took it up and said, 
^^This will explain man's notion of immortality; 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 197 

matter is immortal." '' In the material of his 
present body man finds the promise of his immor- 
tality. True, these material particles now ex- 
isting in his body shall come into other relations. 
In the dissolution of the grave, these particles 
that now enter into the constitution of your and 
my bodies shall cease to exist in their present 
relation, and each molecule shall go out into the 
universe to enter into new relations ; but then, 
the particles, the atoms, cannot be destroyed. 
Man is matter ; matter cannot cease to exist ; 
hence man as matter is immortal." 

The defect in this view, you at once see, is that 
it denies to man a personal, individual immortality. 
Not as the ego that now is, shall man live on. 
Not as a person, retaining identity ; but in a mil- 
lion different forms — in plant and earth and air, 
neither of which can be self-conscious — the man 
who now is, is to live. To say that this doctrine 
denies man's immortality, is to utter a truth that 
is self-evident ; for if we do not live on as indi- 
viduals, we cannot be said to live on at all. 

The second view .is that which finds the promise 
of man's immortality in the persistence of the 
species. '^ The species," say the advocates of this 



igS THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

view, ''must be forever perpetuated." ''The indi- 
vidual may die, but humanity will still live on in 
the generations that shall come and go forever." 
Now it is a wonderful truth, and fatal, if you 
please, to the theory of evolution, that species are 
persistent. The mollusk that suns itself on the 
ocean beach to-day, is identical with its sister of 
the same species, that lived on the shores of the 
once almost shoreless ocean. Practically, in species 
there is no variation. 

When the ancient Egyptians embalmed their 
dead, they put with them seeds, which now for 
five thousand four hundred years have retained 
their vitality. And these, when taken out of their 
sepulchers and planted to-day, spring up into 
plants, the flowers of which in color and every 
feature, are identical w4th those that now make up 
the flora of the Nile valley. The plant imbedded 
in the sedimentary deposits more than fifty thou- 
sand years ago, presents no differences from the 
same species that now bloom in our valleys and 
gardens, and man is the same in posture and in 
visage, in mind and in power, that he was when 
first he walked the earth. It is true that the 
species are persistent, immortal. But fatal as that 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 199 

fact must be to a theory I need not name, yet in it 
man is asked to look for his immortaUty. And 
when this fact of the persistence of the species 
was demonstrated, it was said in some quarters, 
'* Here is the solution of the problem of the future 
life." '* Man as man shall live on forever. The 
individual shall die, but the species will remain. 
In the perseverance of the species, therefore, man 
is to look for his immortality." 

It is said that on the shores of the Dead Sea, 
on verdant trees, there once grew most beautiful 
apples. Incrusted by the salt of that salty air, 
they were gradually transformed, and though re- 
taining their natural color and appearance, they at 
length became a mass of stringent salt. Attracted 
by their beauty, the traveler would hasten to the 
spot, press the seeming fruit to his lips ; but in- 
stead of the satisfaction promised, it crumbled into 
ashes and bitterness. And so with the view of 
immortality just presented. Attractive as it may 
seem when first contemplated, to the soul longing 
for a life beyond, it affords but the most bitter 
delusion. What though the species do live on } 
If the individual is lost, there can be no real im- 
mortality. In either of these views the inspiration 



2 00 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

that comes out of man's belief in a future life is 
wanting. Life is robbed of its sublime signifi- 
cance, indeed becomes empty and meaningless. 
Nothing short of the perpetuity of the individual, 
and possessed of his self-consciousness, can be 
made to answer not only our higher hopes, but 
also our rational conceptions of what a continued 
existence for man must be. Real im.mortality 
must be the immortality of a personal life. 

Well, now, we have gone far enough to see the 
one single requirement to which every true con- 
ception of man's immortality must of necessity 
answer. Every true conception of immortality 
must embrace in it personal identity. The indi- 
vidual of the future must be one with the individual 
that is now. He must be recognized as the same 
person, and as the same person he must be 
able to recognize himself. As we unhesitatingly 
affirm ourselves as one with the individual which 
in any moment of the past we recognized our- 
selves to be, so, in a future state, must each one 
be able to identity himself as the same individual 
that existed here. 

It follows, then, that this identity is to be tested 
and proven first of all by memory. 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 201 

See how this comes. We are now certain that 
we are one w^ith the individual who by our name 
and in the possession of our individual conscious- 
ness lived years ago. And yet in the case of the 
aged man, a thousand changes have come ; a thou- 
sand scenes have passed ; the years have come 
and gone ; youth has come and gone ; Life's winter 
has been reached, and the frail form now leans on 
the staff of old age. And yet that man recognizes 
himself as the same one who once as a boy, 
played with his companions on the hillside, in the 
meadow, and beside the brook, now seventy years 
ago. But how comes he to recognize that fact, 
and how does he prove it 1 Is it because he finds 
himself in the same environment } It cannot be 
that. The objects which as a boy he knew, are 
perhaps no more. Every landmark has changed. 
Perhaps he is even far removed from the place in 
which his childhood was spent. Does he recognize 
himself as the same individual by his body 1 In the 
worn-out frame that now is, no man could recognize 
the child that once played so buoyantly. And 
yet there is something in that man which connects 
the present with the past, and enables him to 
affirm himself to be the same. It is memory. 



202 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

Take that away, and no man could be certain that 
he is the same individual he once was. Through 
all the physical and psychical changes that have 
come and gone, through all circumstances, memory 
has continued, connecting his present consciousness 
with his past ; and thus, though now an aged man, 
he recognizes himself as the same individual. It 
is memory that assures him of his personal identity. 
It must therefore be that if in the future life we 
are to recognize ourselves as the individuals now 
in the present, such recognition is to be had by 
virtue of memory ; it is memory alone that can 
bridge between the present life and the future. 

But in order that the identity of the individual 
be conserved^ character and disposition must also 
be perpetuated. If, for instance, a radical trans- 
formation of character and disposition were in any 
wise to be effected, then could not the individual 
in the future life either recognize himself or be 
recognized as the individual that existed here } 
Very long ago Socrates saw and gave utterance to 
this truth. '' There is a tale, Callicles," says 
Socrates, '* which I have heard and believe, from 
which I draw the following inferences : Death, if 
I am right, is in the first place the separation from 



THE SPIRI7VAL BODY. 203 

one another of two things, soul and body ; this and 
nothing else. And after they are separated they 
retain their several characteristics, which are much 
the same as in this life. The body has the same 
nature and ways and affections, all clearly dis- 
cernible. . . . And in a word, whatever was 
the habit of the body during life, would be dis- 
tinguished after death, either perfectly or in a 
great measure, and for a time. And I should infer 
that this is equally true of the soul, Callicles.'* 

And now with these facts before us, each of 
which I deem to be self-evident, we are brought 
to see the necessity of a something by virtue of 
which all this may become possible. We are 
brought to see that no discussion of the question 
of man's immortality can be thorough or compre- 
hensive in which the matter under discussion is 
ignored. In short, we are led to the conclusion 
that a spiritual body is a postulate of man's im- 
mortality. It may perhaps be, that with some^ 
and from the theological side, the question of 
man's immortality may be discussed separately 
and without reference to that which such immor- 
tality of necessity implies. But it is not so when 
we come to its discussion from the scientific side. 



^o4 THE Sri RITUAL BODY, 

Considered from this, immortality demands the 
existence of an organ, in other words, a spiritual 
body. The one is a postulate of the other. 

Indeed, it would seem that even Paul was 
unable to discuss the one without reference to the 
other. In the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, 
in his treatment of the resurrection and our future 
existence, in order to dispel certain objections, he 
finds it necessary to throw into the midst of his 
discussion, in order to explain the possibility of a 
future life, the expression, ** There is a spiritual 
body." In his judgment, without the statement of 
that fact, the doctrine of the resurrection and a 
future life could not be understood. It comes, 
therefore, that alone as the presence of a spiritual 
body now resident in man is admitted, can this 
immortality be proven. 

Let us now see how this appears. We have just 
been saying that immortality implied personal 
identity ; that the person in the future life must 
recognize himself as one with the person that is 
now. We have also just seen that this identity 
or oneness of the individual in both states is to 
be tested, first of all by memory. But that being 
the case, a spiritual body follows as a necessity. 



THE SFIRITUAL BODY. 2 05 

For how are we to explain the continuance of 
memory when we have ignored or denied the ex- 
istence of a spiritual body ? Memory implies an 
organ, an organ on which impressions whether 
physical or mental have been recorded. For, ob- 
serve that physiological science has established 
the truth that our recollection of past events is 
dependent on certain traces left behind on some 
enduring substance hid away in the cerebral 
regions ; that each thought we think is accom- 
panied by certain molecular displacements or mo- 
tions in the organ of the mind, and that these 
are in some way stored up in that organ so as to 
produce what we call physical memory. That 
without such an organ connecting the individual 
with the past, no one could possibly have memory 
on the one hand, or a conscious individual exist- 
ence on the other. The necessity, therefore, of 
a spiritual body or organ, some durable sub- 
stance connecting the individual of the future state 
with the individual of this, becomes apparent. 
And thus you see that in every comprehensive 
discussion of man's immortality, the question of 
the spiritual body cannot be ignored. In view 
of this fact, two questions, far-reaching in their 
importance, are before us. 



2o6 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

First, Is man in possession of such a spiritual 
body ? 

Second, What is its nature and character ? 

Take the first. Is man now in possession of 
a spiritual body ? 

You know it is sometimes said ''that the writ- 
ers of that Book whose doctrines and whose pre- 
cepts many of us have learned to love, were not 
philosophers, were not men of science." We never 
get through hearing of '' the ignorant fishermen" 
whom Jesus picked up on the Sea of Galilee and 
made of them disciples. Often has it been more 
than insinuated that superstitions and groundless 
fancies common enough among fishermen, have 
crept into the sacred Word, and because found 
there, are believed by the ignorant who call them- 
selves disciples of the Nazarene. 

Against the statement made by Paul, '' There is 
a spiritual body," the same objection has been 
urged. Was it not a mere notion of his own } 
Was it not a superstition current among his own 
class, and which never had and never can have 
foundation in fact ? So some have talked of the 
spiritual body. 

But, my friends, it is a truth which in these 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 207 

times ought not to be lost sight of, that one by 
one these so-called superstitions of the Galilean 
fishermen, as men have come to understand the 
universe better, have also come to be recognized 
as facts in science. And if they were ignorant, 
then it must now be admitted that they always 
spoke better than they knew. It is true that these 
men did not pretend to be men of science ; but it 
nevertheless remains that they somehow understood 
matter and mind and force as no man has under- 
stood them since. It has been a long and weary 
march, but out of the darkness and into the light 
we are gradually moving on and up to where the 
disciples stood, and our conceptions of the uni- 
verse are gradually becoming identical with those 
that the disciples held. Scientific men are coming- 
nearer to the unseen to-day than uninspired men 
ever came before ; and the reality of that unseen, 
and its connection with the seen, are no longer 
disputed. It is Shakespeare who makes Hamlet 
say : — 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreampt of in your philosophy." 

To the truthfulness of that statement, Science, 



2o8 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

with a profounder veneration then ever before, 
nods its assent. And yet I shall not ask you to 
take the statement of Paul, in relation to the 
spiritual body, as final. Apart from Scripture, 
there are two very conclusive proofs of its exist- 
ence. The first of these may be termed the 
psychical. 

It is a fact revealed in every man*s conscious- 
ness that, through all physical changes he retains 
his personal identity. Now, Science tells us that 
within a certain fixed period, not more at most 
than seven years, every particle of the body has 
been eliminated and other particles substituted. 
In other words, within this period these physical 
bodies of ours undergo a complete and radical 
change. Every particle of every tissue in this 
period is transformed ; not a cell or corpuscle, not 
an atom of bone or nerve or muscle or brain fiber 
or connective tissue, is the same at the close of 
seven years as entered into the framework of the 
body at the commencement of that period. No 
particle of the body of the child at seven years is 
the same as that with which it began life. It fol- 
lows, then, that in the case of the youth of fourteen 
years, every particle of his physical system has 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 209 

twice changed and given place to others. At 
twenty-one this change has been thrice effected ; 
and in the case of the one who has reached the 
age of seventy, this change has been effected no 
less than ten times. At seventy years a man has, 
therefore, been in possession of ten different 
bodies, each entirely separate and distinct from 
any of the preceding. The change that goes on, 
finds its illustration in the various characters 
assumed by the player in the theater. In a par- 
ticular scene, in the impersonation of a certain 
character, a certain garb will be assumed, while 
in another scene under a different garb, an en- 
tirely different character is represented ; and so 
on during the course of the play. Changing his 
costume to suit the characters he aims to repre- 
sent, a single player will, to the eye of the un- 
initiated, appear to be as many persons as the 
characters he has assumed. But to the initiated 
the identity of the person in each of the characters 
is apparent. The external may have changed, the 
tone of voice may have varied, the attitude and 
gesture may have been different, and yet back of 
each character stands the one and the same indi- 
vidual actor, It is so with man during the course 



2IO THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 

of a long life. The physical may change ; no atom 
of the body may remain the same ; and yet through 
it all, he recognizes the certain truth that he is 
still the same person. But now the fact that each 
individual knows himself to be one through all 
these changes, and recognizes that his identity 
through life is a certainty in spite of the flux of 
the particles of the body, points us to something 
in him that has remained the same through all the 
changes. Beneath the matter that has come and 
gone, a something has persisted, and, by virtue of 
this, man recognizes his identity and is able to 
affirm in spite of the fact that every particle of 
his visible and tangible body has changed, that 
something has remained, and that that something 
is himself. 

It is certain, therefore, that this something 
which has endured is not the gross matter of 
his body. It is not this that has remained un- 
changed, but something back of this ; a something 
not subject to the laws that govern ordinary 
matter, neither indeed can be. And thus out of 
man's consciousness of personal identity comes 
an argument for the existence of his spiritual 
body : a something within man that continues 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 21 1 

through every change ; that cannot be base matter 
as we know it, and that by virtue of its persist- 
ence, enables each of us to affirm our identity. 
Take away this something ; leave nothing but the 
base matter of the physical body, and no man 
could affirm himself, after a period, to be the 
same individual that he once was. 

But I desire to call your attention to another 
fact, and to another proof for the existence of 
the spiritual body. It may be called the physio- 
logical. A few moments ago I called your atten- 
tion to it in an incidental way. Among those 
who have the best right to speak, it is stoutly 
held that mind must also have its organ ; that 
without a substance of some kind, upon which 
mental and sensuous impressions are made, con- 
scious thought could not be. It is likewise a set- 
tled question in mental physiology, that memory 
implies and demands such a substance. If you 
journey yonder on the shores of the Nile, you will 
find monuments covered with inscriptions. The 
deeds of heroes and the annals of empires long 
since passed away, are traced there upon the 
imperishable rocks, and men to-day, studying out 
the meaning of those strange characters, read 



212 THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 

the history of nations that are no more. Those 
rocks bearing those inscriptions connect the pres- 
ent with the past, and stand there as history's 
organ of memory. Destroy these rocks, and 
with them perishes the knowledge traced upon 
them. Just so it is in the case of memory. 
Without some substance back of the mind upon 
which impressions may be traced and knowledge 
recorded, memory could not be ; for it is alone as 
the mind reads these impressions, long since made 
on this enduring substance, that it becomes pos- 
sible to recall past events, or to retain knowledge 
that has once been ours. Now observe that it is 
in this w^ay modern physiological science feels 
itself compelled to account for the fact of mem- 
ory, and in this way does it explain our power to 
recall the past and to retain knowledge of which 
we have once come into possession. 

You see, then, that memory implies two things. 
First : It implies an organ upon which impres- 
sions are made. Second : It implies the conserva- 
tion of that organ. For when the organ perishes 
it must be clear that the ability to recall perishes 
with it. 

And thus we have two very important and 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 213 

significant facts bearing on the question of the 
existence of the spiritual body in man. It is 
certain that this organ upon which memory 
is dependent, cannot be made up of the gross 
matter out of which the tangible fabric of the 
body is built, for if this were the case, it would 
not persist. It would then be subject to the 
laws that govern the gross matter of the body, 
and, inasmuch as this matter is gradually giving 
way and being replaced by other, it follows that, 
after a period of seven years, it would be impos- 
sible for any one to recall anything that had taken 
place prior to that period. And yet we are cer- 
tain that the reach of memory is not thus circum- 
scribed. Memory knows no time limit. The man 
of seventy years recalls the scenes and the inci- 
dents of his youth as readily and as accurately as 
those of yesterday. It must, therefore, be that the 
substance or organ belonging to memory has been 
conserved. Amid the repeated changes of every 
material particle it m.ust have held its place. It 
cannot, therefore, be of a nature the same as the 
gross matter of the body. It cannot be matter 
as we know matter, but must be something spirit- 
ual and unchangeable in its character. 



2 14 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

And thus, when man has come to look closely 
into the facts of his own consciousness, he has 
come to recognize the necessity of a spiritual 
substance or body, in order that he may interpret 
the facts of consciousness as they exist. He has 
found himself in the possession of a conscious- 
ness of personal identity. He has found himself 
in possession of memory, and, driven to account 
for these facts, he has found the existence of a 
spiritual body as necessary to their solution. 

But we come now to our second inquiry : 
What is the character and nature of this spiritual 
body 1 

It is very manifest that such a body is now 
resident in man. But its character is not so 
easily determined as is the fact of its existence. 
And yet we shall not look in vain even into the 
question as to its character. But you must not 
be surprised if it is said that this body of which 
we have been speaking is material in its nature. 
You know that Herman Ulrici, who has looked 
into our question more deeply than any other of 
whom I have knowledge, spoke of the spiritual 
body as '^ a perfect fluid.'' He conceives it ^' as 
similar to the ether, only not like the latter con- 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 215 

sisting of atoms, but absolutely continuous, and 
that this fluid extends out from a given center, 
permeating the whole atomic structure of the 
body, operating instinctively and in cooperation 
with the vital force." 

I am aware that in the minds of many there 
exists an almost instinctive aversion to every 
attempt at the materialization of that which we 
have always conceived as the immaterial within 
us. And yet it must be admitted that much of 
our prejudice arises out of the fact that we have 
studied matter altogether in its lower and baser 
forms. When the term matter is used, at once 
there come before the mind conceptions based 
upon our knowledge of matter in its lower forms. 
We think of v/eight, of inertia, and the like, as 
the essential properties of matter ; and imagine 
that the only forms in which matter can exist are 
the forms which it assumes in earth and water 
and plant, and the various objects which make up 
the visible and tangible world. 

We say that weight is an essential property of 
matter, and have long been repeating over and 
over to ourselves that '' no two substances can 
occupy the same space at the same time/' Of 



2l6 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

course, if our conceptions of matter are such as 
these, if our notions of it have all been formed 
by our study of matter in but two or three of its 
forms, we shall have very grave objections to any 
theory in which the spiritual body is conceived of 
as material in its character. And yet it is very 
clear, in the light of recent investigation, that our 
ideas of matter must now be very greatly modi- 
fied, and other conceptions that we have had, 
entirely given up. Indeed, by those who have 
studied most into its nature, it is now admitted 
that of the essence, character and possibilities of 
matter, we perhaps know less than we do of any 
other one thing. But this much is certain. The 
better we come to know it in its higher forms, the 
more evident is its independence of those laws 
and conditions which hitherto were supposed to 
control matter universally. In the language of 
Professor Crookes, matter, as we pass from the 
lower to the higher forms, more and more loses 
its ordinary properties and more and more ** as- 
sumes the character of radiant energy." 

Let me read here a few sentences from ^' The 
Life and Letters of Faraday," concerning the 
nature of matter in its higher forms. '* If we 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 217 

conceive," says Faraday, "a change as far beyond 
vaporization as that is above fluidity, and then 
take into account also the proportional increased 
extent of alteration as the changes rise, we shall, 
perhaps, if we can form any conception at all, not 
fall far short of radiant matter ; and, as in the last 
conversion many qualities were lost, so here, also, 
many more would disappear." 

** As we ascend from the solid to the fluid and 
gaseous states, physical properties diminish in 
number and variety, each state losing some of the 
properties which belong to the preceding state. 
When solids are converted into fluids, all the 
varieties of hardness and softness are necessarily 
lost. Crystalline and other shapes are destroyed. 
Opacity and color frequently give way to a color- 
less transparency, and a general mobility of par- 
ticles is conferred. Passing onward to the gas- 
eous state, still more of the evident characters 
of bodies are annihilated. The immense differ- 
ences in their weight almost disappear. The re- 
mains of difference in color are lost. Transpa- 
rency becomes universal, and they are all elastic. 
They now form but one set of substances, and 
the varieties of density, hardness, opacity, color, 



2i8 THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 

elasticity and form, which render the number of 
solids and fluids almost infinite, are now supplied 
by a few slight variations in weight, and some 
unimportant shades of color." 

You see, then, that as we ascend from the 
baser to the higher forms of matter, there is a 
gradual resignation of those properties which we 
commonly regard as belonging to matter. Weight 
is, at least in a great measure, lost. The prop- 
erty of impenetrability is lost, and it is even now 
admitted that matter in its higher forms may 
occupy the same space with matter in its lower. 
Do you say that that cannot be 1 Open Professor 
Tait's recent book on ^* Properties of Matter,'' 
and bear in mind that at present no one has a 
better right to speak of matter, its properties and 
possibilities, than he. The statement to which I 
specially call your attention is that in which he 
reviews the atomic theory as propounded by 
Boscovich. In his statement of the theory, 
Boscovich said that, on account of a peculiar law, 
no two atoms could be conceived as occupying the 
same space at the same time. To this last state- 
ment. Professor Tait objects in these words : 
** But this seems an unwarranted concession to 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 219 

the vulgar opinion that two bodies cannot co-exist 
in the same place. This opinion is deduced from 
our experience of the behavior of bodies of sen- 
sible size, but we have no experimental evidence 
that two atoms cannot coincide/' Now I want 
you to fix your attention on that last statement, 
because it will be of immense importance by and 
by when we come to study the spiritual body of 
Christ as it was revealed prior to his ascension. 
There is also a very significant passage in one of 
the lectures of the deservedly famous Dr. Thomas 
Young, to which I must also call your attention 
before we pass on. He is speaking of the differ- 
ent orders of being, and, in this connection, he 
says : ** And of these different orders of beings, 
the more refined and immaterial appear to per- 
vade freely the grosser. We know not but that 
thousands of spiritual worlds may exist unseen 
forever by human eyes. Nor have we any reason 
to suppose that even the presence of matter in any 
given spot, necessarily excludes these- existences 
from it." 

And thus we come to the conclusion, looking at 
the question purely from its scientific side, that 
the spiritual body may be material in its nature. 



2 20 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

If matter in its higher forms may freely permeate 
matter in its lower, then is there no intrinsic im- 
probability that the substance of the spiritual body 
may be material though it occupies space seem- 
ingly occupied by the grosser matter of which the 
physical body is made up. But that the matter of 
the spiritual body and that of the physical is the 
same in state cannot for a moment be admitted. 
Something of the laws that govern matter in its 
ordinary state we know. These, if governing the 
higher forms of matter, would preclude it from 
entering into the constitution of the spiritual body. 
But we are certain that matter in its higher forms 
is not under the dominion of those laws that govern 
it in its lower, nor does matter in its higher forms 
behave at all as it does in its lower. The sub- 
stance, therefore, of the spiritual body, while doubt- 
less material in its character, partakes also of the 
character of spiritual being by virtue of which it 
is very properly called ^* spiritual body.'' 

But I ask you now to turn from the field of what 
may be called the merely conjectural, to that of the 
more positive knowledge of the spiritual body. I 
dare not say that only once, but I may positively 
affirm that once at least in history, a spiritual body 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 221 

was seen here on the earth. I speak of the resur- 
rected body of Jesus. Nor do I offer an apology 
for making reference to the resurrected body of 
Jesus, or for asking you to a scrutiny of that body 
as it appeared during the forty days intervening 
between his resurrection and his ascension. The 
time has passed when an apology was demanded 
for making reference to the great facts of the res- 
urrection of Jesus in a scientific discussion. You 
know that De Wette was the leader of the acutest 
school of German rationalism in his day. So thor- 
oughly did he set himself against the acceptance 
as truth of anything the verity of which could not 
be clearly established by the logical method, that 
he was called '^the universal doubter." And yet 
it is De Wette who says that '' the fact of the 
resurrection, although a darkness which cannot be 
dispelled rests on the way and manner of it, cannot 
itself be called in doubt." The fact, therefore, of 
the resurrection of Jesus stands side by side with 
the other well-accredited facts of history ; and ac- 
cepting it as such we have a perfect right to get 
what light we can from it even in a scientific dis- 
cussion. But look at those facts for a moment. 
On the morning of the third day the sepulchre 



222 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

of Joseph of Arimathea is found empty. No man 
had seen Jesus go forth. No one knew what had 
become of him. Some time afterward on the way 
to Emmaus two disciples meet a stranger. For 
a tim.e he journeys by their side, but they know 
not who he is. He afterward sits down with them 
to meat, and then for the first time, is the mys- 
tery dispelled, and in the person of the stranger 
the two disciples behold the resurrected Jesus. 

Go back, now, to Jerusalem. The enemies of 
the disciples are vigilant. Rumors are afloat that 
the disciples are plotting insurrection, and every 
secret meeting is watched with suspicion. But 
there, in a little room with doors carefully locked 
to shut out any chance intruder, are assembled ten 
of the disciples. Every avenue of entrance or of 
exit is sealed and the disciples are congratulating 
themselves on their security. Suddenly Jesus 
stands in the midst of them ; the closed doors offer 
no barrier to his incoming. There he stands be- 
fore the amazed disciples, recognized by all as their 
risen Lord. The account of what transpired is 
very interesting and significant. Naturally the ten 
are affrighted. The sudden appearance of Christ 
in his corporeal body, the recollection that in order 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 223 

to preclude the entrance of any one they had 
closed and sealed the doors, but contributed to 
their fright in finding themselves thus confronted 
by a visible form. At first they thought a spirit 
was standing before them. Now notice the words 
of Christ: ^'Why are ye troubled, and why do 
doubts arise in your minds t See my hands and 
my feet, that it is I. Handle me and see, for a 
spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." 
Then he shows them his hands and his side ; and, 
as though further to assure them of his identity, 
he ate a piece of broiled fish in their presence. 
Now I want you to notice four things : 

The body that appeared to the disciples in that 
closed room was the same body that was taken 
down from the cross and entombed in the sepulchre 
of Joseph of Arimathea. You have the proof for 
that in the fact that as such it was recognized by 
the ten disciples ; that body was no longer base 
matter, as we know it. Had it been such it could 
not have passed through the closed doors behind 
which the disciples had shut themselves ; that 
body was not spirit, was not a mere apparition, but 
was substance. '^ Handle me and see, for a spirit 
hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." 



224 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

Though matter, the passage of Christ's body through 
closed doors can find its explanation alone in the 
fact of its being matter in its higher form, and 
brought into this form, out of the lower, by virtue 
of its contact with the spiritual. 

Do you say that this passage through closed 
doors was miraculous, and that for this reason it 
can teach us nothing in regard to the nature of 
the spiritual body ? My friends, that depends 
upon what you mean by the term miraculous. If, 
with Archbishop Trench, you hold that the true 
miracle is not the infraction of a law, but the neutral- 
izing of a lower law for a time by a higher ; if with 
you ''the true miracle is but a higher and a purer 
nature, coming down out of a world of untroubled 
harmonies into this world of ours, for the purpose 
of bringing this back again into harmony with the 
higher ; if in the miracle this world of ours is but 
drawn into a higher order of things, and the laws 
producing it are but laws of a mightier range and 
a higher perfection, though not contrary to natural 
laws," then was the passage of the body of Jesus 
through closed doors a miracle. In that act the 
lower laws governing base matter were held in sus- 
pension by the higher laws that hold in the realm 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 225 

of the spiritual. But we do not for a moment 
admit that Jesus made use of any other power than 
that which belongs intrinsically to the spiritual 
body in order to pass through the closed doors. 
That act was an exhibition of the possibilities be- 
longing to the spiritual body as being a higher 
order of existence. That power belongs to sub- 
stance in its higher forms. 

Turn back now and read again what Faraday 
said in relation to matter in its higher forms, and 
as you read it let me ask you also to bear in mind 
that it is now admitted that matter in its higher 
forms may occupy the same space with matter in 
its lower, hence may penetrate and pass through it. 
Here are Faraday's words : '' The person who 
admits the radiant form of matter, will show you 
a gradual resignation of properties in the matter 
we can appreciate as the matter ascends in the 
scale of forms. '^ Take, too, in this connection, the 
statement of Dr. Thomas Young : ^' And of these 
different orders of being the more spiritual and 
immaterial appear to pervade freely the grosser. 
Nor have we any reason to suppose that 
even the presence of matter in any given spot nec- 
essarily excludes these existences from it." 



2 26 THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 

Well, now, with these higher conceptions of mat- 
ter and its possibilities, as taught by the acutest 
of scientific thinkers, does it seem to you to be an 
impossibility that the resurrected body of Jesus 
should be able to pass through closed doors, or 
that, though matter, it should be able to pass 
through matter ? And, in the light of these facts, 
does it not rather seem that that act belonged to 
the category of possibilities belonging to the spirit- 
ual body, rather than that it was miraculous as 
some count the miraculous ? My friends, that the 
resurrected and spiritual body of Jesus partook of 
the nature of the material cannot be held in doubt 
by one who carefully reads the narrative of his 
appearance. Those words forever stand against 
such a conclusion: '* Handle me and see, for a 
spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have/* . 
True, a spirit hath not flesh and bones, but a spirit- 
ual body has. Partaking both of the nature of 
matter and of spirit, though material on the one 
side it is not limited as is ordinary matter. The 
qualities of spirit have been communicated to it, 
transfiguring and glorifying it, so that through 
doors of brass or walls of adamant it can pass as 
readily as though these spaces were unoccupied. 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 227 

Light as the desire that prompts, it can also mount 
upward, transport itself from place to place — the 
willing instrument of the spirit of which it is the 
organ. 

And thus in our study of the nature of the spir- 
itual body, as revealed in the manifestations of 
Him whose resurrection and ascension cannot be 
called in question, we get some conception of its 
real character and possibilities. But, you say, 
"There is a wide difference between the resur- 
rected body of Jesus and the spiritual body resi« 
dent in man. No part of that body was lost. 
Identically the same body, part for part and parti- 
cle for particle, was raised, for no part of it saw 
corruption.'* 

You ask, ** Do you mean, then, to say that the body 
of Jesus in the very last moment preceding his death 
was a spiritual body, seeing that it was this body 
that was raised and that afterward ascended.?'* 
That is a very pertinent and yet a very difficult 
question. But if we are willing to submit our- 
selves to the lead of the profoundest and most 
far-sighted theologians, we shall find a way out of 
the darkness. Among the acutest of theological 
thinkers this is the view taken : that the body of 



2 28 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

Jesus during his earthly ministry was like our 
own, corruptible, subject to the same wants, sus- 
ceptible to the same conditions, and mortal ; but 
that during his life of unsullied purity and contact 
with God, a gradual change went on, so that even 
that body once really material, became more and 
more spiritual in its character. By the leavening 
and transforming power of the indwelling spirit, 
the baser material was gradually eliminated, so 
that the processes of decay which in your case 
and mine must go on in the dissolution of the 
grave, for the elimination of the grosser material 
of our bodies, went on in the case of Jesus during 
life. 

By virtue of unhindered contact with the spirit- 
ual, the corruptible gradually put on incorruption, 
the mortal gradually put on immortality, and, the 
material gradually giving place, was at length 
entirely merged into the spiritual body. At the 
moment of the ascension this transformation was 
completed. 

Let me read here a few sentences that I have 
taken from the ** Dogmatics of the great Danish 
theologian, Dr. Martensen " : — 

'' All the four gospel accounts of the resurrec- 



THE SPIRTTUAL BODY. 229 

tion, seem to introduce two contrasted representa- 
tions concerning the nature of the resurrected 
body of our Lord. The risen one seems now to 
live a natural human life, in a body such as he had 
before his death. He has flesh and bones, he eats 
and drinks ; again, on the contrary, he seems to 
have a body of a spiritual, transcendental kind, 
which is independent of the limitations of time 
and space. He enters through closed doors, he 
stands suddenly in the midst of his disciples, and 
as suddenly becomes invisible to them. This con- 
tradiction which occurs in the appearance of the 
risen one during the forty days, may be explained 
upon the supposition that during this interval his 
body was in a state of transition and of change, 
upon the boundaries of both worlds, and possessed 
the impress and character of both of these worlds. 
Not until the moment of the ascension can we 
suppose his body was fully glorified and free from 
all earthly limitations and wants, like the spiritual 
body of which Paul speaks." ' ■ 

You see, then, that while in .the estimation of 
this author there went on a gradual change of 
transformation of the material into the spiritual, 
he confines the period of transition more particu- 



230 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

larly to the forty days intervening between the 
resurrection and the ascension, and holds that 
such a transformation was not completed or the 
spiritual body perfectly revealed until the moment 
of the ascension. Not so, however, with the early 
church. The view then prevailed that immediately 
after the resurrection his body was the spiritual 
body of which Paul speaks, and it was very prop- 
erly maintained that the sudden appearances and 
disappearances of the risen Saviour could not be 
explained if after his resurrection his body had 
not been spiritual. 

But that this process of transformation, this 
gradual leavening of the material by the spiritual, 
went on during the life of Jesus prior to his cruci- 
fixion, cannot for a moment be held in question. 
No less an accurate thinker than Julius Muller, 
face to face with the facts of the transfiguration, 
admits that these facts cannot be explained except 
on the supposition that the change was already 
going on. Here are his own words: '^Though 
the resurrection must be regarded as the turning 
point, when the glorifying and spiritualizing pro- 
cess in Christ's body began to approach its con- 
summation in the ascension, we cannot limit the 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 231 

process within those two events. It may have 
been going on gradually even before his death, 
without in the least deteriorating from the reality 
of his earthly body. There is one event indicat- 
ing this in the Gospel history — I mean the 
transfiguration." 

Well, now, let us put these facts together, in 
order that we may see what we have. 

We have here in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, 
a material body. We have this body, under full 
contact with the resident spirit, gradually losing 
its baser material until the stupendous scenes of 
the transfiguration, the various appearances and 
disappearances, the passage through closed doors, 
and finally the ascension become possible. And 
yet, that that body, so far as it served as an organ, 
was immaterial, cannot for a moment be admitted ; 
for to admit that would make the words of Jesus, 
*' Handle me and see," and those to doubting 
Thomas, '' Reach hither thy finger and behold my 
hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it 
into my side," of no meaning. 

And now that such shall be the character of our 
spiritual bodies is a very necessary conclusion. 
Not indeed of the baser matter of the present 



232 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

shall our future bodies be, but of the higher. Of 
the baser we shall be rid in the dissolution of the 
grave, but the higher we shall retain. What a 
life of complete fellowship with and indwelling of 
God did for the body of Jesus, the grave must do 
for us. But the body that shall be is now. The 
higher of the present shall be the substance of 
the future body. It is in the light of such a con- 
ception that the words of Paul in relation to the 
spiritual body can be interpreted. Speaking of 
the present body he says, *' It is sown a natural 
body, it is raised a spiritual body." Plainly, in his 
conception, the body that now is is the body that 
shall be. *' There is** (not there shall be) ''a spir- 
itual body. For we know that if our earthly house 
of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a build- 
ing of God, a house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens.*' 

As Christ arose from the dead with a glorified 
body, the first-born among many brethren, so 
shall man, disrobed of the gross matter that now 
inswathes his true body here, come forth a spirit- 
ual body. 

And right along here there lies a truth of 
immense ethical significance. We are told that, 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 233 

in their unscientific way, the ancients, accounting 
for the brilliancy of the diamond, said that it was 
caused by the sunbeams that the diamond had 
absorbed. For thousands of years lying under 
the fiery gleam of the sun, there was imparted to 
these jewels a radiance which, retained somehow 
in their substance, accounted for their present 
brightness. And while in the case of the diamond 
the ancients were in error, they came very near a 
truth that has since become an established fact in 
science. For when Prof. Becquerel discovered 
the phosphorescent qualities of calcium sulphide 
and then attemxpted to account for its phospho- 
rescence, it was found that certain substances 
have power of assimilating properties belong- 
ing to certain other substances, and by virtue 
of this power they are able to manifest certain 
phenomena not naturally belonging to themselves. 
Steel becomes magnetized in contact with the 
magnet and takes to itself properties not belong- 
ing to it before. Calcium sulphide, after exposure 
to the sun, assumes to itself a property that before 
did not belong to it and becomes luminous in the 
darkness. 

And is it therefore an unwarranted assumption, 



234 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

and without its analogy in nature, when we say 
that the same thing may go on in the case of the 
base matter now entering into the constitution of 
our bodies ? Expose the matter within our bodies 
to free contact with Him who is spirit, and the 
result will be the assimilation of spiritual qualities 
and the elimination of the baser material. What 
went on during the life of Christ in the gradual 
elimination of the baser material and in the per- 
fection of the spiritual body, within certain limits 
has gone on in man, and may go on in man still. 

In the name of science it may be affirmed that 
what is taken from the flesh is given to the spirit, 
and what is taken from the spirit is given to the 
grosser flesh. It is certain that the consciousness 
of humanity, however it may be explained, bears 
testimony to that fact. 

The judgment of mankind, were it uttered, 
would bear testimony that between the matter of 
the body of a Nero and that of an Elijah, there is 
the vastest difference in character. In the one, 
the higher and more spiritual assumed the charac- 
ter of baser matter. In the other, the baser 
material had gradually given place to the higher 
and the more spiritual. 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 235 

There is a very significant passage in Arch- 
bishop Trench's book on miracles, that I must 
quote in this connection. You will find it at the 
close of the chapter entitled, '' The Walking on the 
Sea." This is the passage: "In regard to this 
very law of gravitation, a feeble and for the most 
part unconsciously possessed remnant of his power 
survives to man, in the well-attested fact that his 
body is lighter when he is awake than sleeping." 
And this is the way he accounts for it : '* From 
this we conclude that the human consciousness as 
an inner center works as an opposing force to the 
attraction of the earth and the centripetal force of 
gravity, however unable now to overcome it." 

To the recent statements and their proofs that 
in certain states of moral trance the body is 
actually lighter than in those states we call normal, 
I need hardly call your attention. That field of 
science has not yet been sufficiently explored. 
And yet no less an authority than Prof. Crookes, 
gives it as his opinion that in certain states of 
moral trance the body is actually lighter than at 
other periods, and if this be the case he says fur- 
ther, "its causes must be natural." I do not share 
in the sneer in which some have indulged at this 



236 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

statement of Mr. Crookes, that, '' if the body in 
states of moral trance is lighter, the causes must 
be natural." For, my friends, we are coming to 
recognize the truth that there are no arbitrary 
lines separating the temporal from the eternal, the 
seen from the unseen, or the natural from the spirit- 
ual. We are coming to recognize that the one 
passes over into the other by natural, orderly laws. 
For one, I cannot but believe that, when matter 
in its higher states is better known, and when the 
effects on that matter in contact with the spiritual 
are better understood, we shall find it to be en- 
dowed with possibilities of which we do not even 
dream. Certain it is that even before the ascen- 
sion, and even before the crucifixion, the body of 
Jesus manifested powers clearly belonging to the 
spiritual body. He disappeared ; he walked on the 
sea ; and as at Capernaum, so elsewhere the won- 
der of the disciples was expressed in the question, 
" Rabbi, when camest thou hither } '' And on Her- 
mon, in the hush and shadow of the midnight, he 
gave to the disciples an exhibition of his higher 
nature, in order to fortify their faith against the 
hour of his crucifixion. 

It is true that by some all this may be set over 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY, 237 

to the realm of the visionary. It may be said that 
this transformation of the material into the spiritual 
in contact with the spirit of God which we have 
affirmed as going on in man, is but an empty 
notion. It may so be ; but I want you to observe 
that, by that judgment, you are left to account for 
the then unexplained fact, that by all men and in 
all ages these notions have not been regarded as 
visionary, but real. You have then to account for 
the persistence of a judgment in favor of which 
there never was nor can be a single fact. 

Let those who choose deny these possibilities to 
the higher matter in contact with the spiritual in 
man. There are those who will not and cannot. 
And to these there is herein revealed a truth, in 
the light of which the translation of Enoch and 
Elijah, as well as the ascension of Christ, can be 
better understood. It can then be understood 
how that with bodies like our own, and by virtue 
of their walk with God, they were at length able 
to mount upward ; how that the realm over which 
the laws that govern matter in its lower forms was 
gradually overstepped and transformed into the 
spiritual body, they could pass upward into the 
unseen. 



2:^8 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

I know that you will pardon mc, if, in conclud- 
ing, I ask you to look hastily at a certain deduc- 
tion, which, while not belonging properly to the 
discussion, yet necessarily comes out of it. In our 
consideration of the spiritual body there has come 
unsought an answer to another question. I speak 
of the question of our after recognition. 

William CuUen Bryant, in a poem dedicated to 
his departed wife, puts a question that you and 
I are constantly putting to ourselves, and to which 
we are ever seeking an answer. 

For thirty years the wife of the poet had been 
the ministering angel of his home, and for ten had 
preceded him to the other side ; amid the loneli- 
ness that was his he wrote and dedicated to her 
this poem : — 



" How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 
The disembodied spirits of the dead, 

When all of thee that time could wither, sleeps 
And perishes among the dust we tread ? 

" For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 
If there I meet thy gentle presence not. 

Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 
In thy serenest eye the tender thought. 



THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 239 

"Will not thy own meek heart demand me there, 
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given ? 

My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 
And must thou never utter it in Heaven ? 

" Yet, though thou wearest the glory of the sky, 
Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name, 

The same fair, thoughtful brow and gentle eye, 

Lovelier in Heaven's sweet climate, yet the same ? '' 

The answer to Bryant's inquiry we have had. 
In the body that now is, we find the body that shall 
be. Stripped of the defects and hinderances that 
inhere in its baser matter, retaining its higher 
material elements, the body that now is shall 
pass into the unseen. 






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